Using Biochemistry to Educate Students on the Causal Link between Social Epigenetics and Health Disparities.

Background: While pharmacy education standards require students to recognize social determinants of health (SDOH), there is an opportunity to improve how this is taught in the curriculum. One innovative approach is to educate student pharmacists in a biochemistry course through the integration of topics like epigenetics using SDOH as the framework.

Innovation: A 50-minute educational activity was used to supplement material on the regulation of gene expression, in which epigenetic changes are driven by SDOH.

SphK1 mediates hepatic inflammation in a mouse model of NASH induced by high saturated fat feeding and initiates proinflammatory signaling in hepatocytes.

Steatohepatitis occurs in up to 20% of patients with fatty liver disease and leads to its primary disease outcomes, including fibrosis, cirrhosis, and increased risk of hepatocellular carcinoma. Mechanisms that mediate this inflammation are of major interest. We previously showed that overload of saturated fatty acids, such as that which occurs with metabolic syndrome, induced sphingosine kinase 1 (SphK1), an enzyme that generates sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P).