Experiences of discrimination are associated with microbiome and transcriptome alterations in the gut.

Background: Discrimination is a recognized psychosocial stressor that has been linked to various negative health outcomes. This study explored the impact of discrimination on gut health, specifically focusing on microbiome changes, predicted metagenomic differences, transcriptomic profiles, and the potential for using a multi-omic approach to predict discrimination to identify discrimination status for an individual. Methods: We conducted a comprehensive investigation involving male and premenopausal female participants, using the Everyday Discrimination Scale to classify them into either high or low discrimination.

Nucleated red blood cells as a novel indicator of CD34 cell content in umbilical cord blood.

Background: Umbilical cord blood (UCB) has become an important source of transplantable CD34 hematopoietic progenitor cells. Cord blood banks (CBBs) can increase their efficiency by minimizing the processing of UCB units with low CD34 content, which have a lower likelihood of transplant utilization. We sought to identify a readily available preprocessing metric that would correlate with CD34 cell counts, without the cost of additional analysis.