Tony Wang

All Publications

• Shifts in Students' Attitudes Towards Pain Patients, Pain, and Opioid Management Following a Dedicated Medical School Pain Curriculum. Journal of pain research Durbhakula, S., Wang, T. Y., Segna, K. G., Limerick, G. R., Broachwala, M. Y., Schatman, M. E., Zaidi, M. A., Siddarthan, I. J., Toy, S. 2024; 17: 827-835

  Abstract

  To examine the immediate effects of a comprehensive pain course on medical students' pre-existing perceptions and attitudes toward pain patients and opioid management.First-year medical students at a major academic medical center enrolled in a required pre-clerkship pain course in June 2020 and completed pre- and post-course online surveys with Likert-scale questions about their attitudes toward pain management and opioid-related issues. Additionally, the surveys included a free-text question where the students listed the first five words that came to mind when hearing the word "opioids". These words were categorized as "professional" or "lay" words and further as having "positive", "negative", or "neutral" connotations. Data analyses included descriptive statistics, as well as non-parametric and parametric tests.Fifty-four of the 119 students responded to pretest and posttest surveys and were included in paired analyses. There was a significant difference between the number of professional words used before (M=1.21, SD=0.97) and after the course (M=2.40 SD=1.33); t(52)=-6.39, P<0.001. Students also used more lay-positive words after the course (M=0.81, SD=0.63) than they used pre-course (M=0.23, SD=0.43); t(51)=-5.98, P<0.001. Students' post-course responses to several key Likert-scale questions showed significant shifts toward more positive attitudes about caring for patients with pain. For example, students acknowledged greater comfort in providing opioids for chronic pain (P<0.001) where appropriate, and enhanced interest in handling complex pain cases (P<0.001).Results showed that a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary pain course could greatly enhance first-year medical students' attitudes toward pain management, chronic pain patients, and the complex issues surrounding opioids.

  View details for DOI 10.2147/JPR.S447671

  View details for PubMedID 38449798

  View details for PubMedCentralID PMC10916513

• WikiAnesthesia: A Crowd-sourced Anesthesia Knowledge Repository Sutton, O., Wang, T. Y., Larson, B. J., Nguyen, T., Rishel, C. A. LIPPINCOTT WILLIAMS & WILKINS. 2023: 48

  View details for Web of Science ID 001042922900029

• WikiAnesthesia Practice Groups: A Solution for Sharing Institutional Anesthesia Knowledge Wang, T. Y., Sutton, O. M., Chandrasekar, E. K., Larson, B. J., Nguyen, T., Rishel, C. A. LIPPINCOTT WILLIAMS & WILKINS. 2023: 71

  View details for Web of Science ID 001042922900044

• Human cardiac myosin light chain 4 (MYL4) mosaic expression patterns vary by sex. Scientific reports Wang, T. Y., Arking, D. E., Maleszewski, J. J., Fox-Talbot, K., Nieuwenhuis, T. O., Santhanam, L., Virmani, R., Rosenberg, A. Z., Halushka, M. K. 2019; 9 (1): 12681

  Abstract

  Sex disparities modulate cardiac function, although the proteins and mechanisms remain to be elucidated. We recently demonstrated a mosaic pattern of protein expression in the heart for over 100 proteins. Here we investigate one of these proteins, myosin light chain 4 (MYL4), which is important for contractile functions by increasing force production. We assayed the expression pattern of MYL4 across 756 ventricular myocardial samples from 668 individuals utilizing a semi-automated Cell Profiler method on five tissue microarrays (TMAs) of cardiac tissues across a diverse set of diseases. The percentage of MYL4 positive cells was significantly higher in male subjects independently across all five TMAs, regardless of disease state (p = 8.66e-15). Higher MYL4 expression was also modestly associated with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (p = 6.3e-04). MYL4 expression did not associate with sudden cardiac death or other cardiomyopathies. This study demonstrates a new mosaic pattern of protein expression that underlies sex disparities in the human heart.

  View details for DOI 10.1038/s41598-019-49191-0

  View details for PubMedID 31481666

  View details for PubMedCentralID PMC6722118

• Cardiomyocytes have mosaic patterns of protein expression. Cardiovascular pathology : the official journal of the Society for Cardiovascular Pathology Wang, T. Y., Lee, D., Fox-Talbot, K., Arking, D. E., Chakravarti, A., Halushka, M. K. 2018; 34: 50-57

  Abstract

  Skeletal myocytes have well-established fast and slow twitch fibers with unique gene and protein specific expression patterns. By immunohistochemical staining, these show a mosaic pattern across myocytes. We hypothesized cardiac myocytes may behave similarly where some proteins are differentially expressed between mature cardiomyocytes. We utilized the tool HPASubC on over 52,000 cardiac images of the Human Protein Atlas to identify differential protein expression patterns by immunohistochemistry across the cardiomyocytes. We matched identified proteins to open chromatin and gene expression data. We identified 143 putative proteins with mosaic patterns of expression across the cardiomyocytes. We validated four of these proteins (MYL3, MYL4, PAM, and MYOM1) and demonstrated unique atrial or ventricular patterns of expression for each. Acetylation of histone H3K27 at the promoters of these four genes were consistent with the atrial/ventricular expression patterns. Despite the generally accepted homogeneity of cardiomyocytes, a small subset of proteins varies between cardiomyocytes in a mosaic pattern. This fundamental process has been previously uncharacterized. These changes may inform on different functional and disease-related activities of proteins in individual cardiomyocytes.

  View details for DOI 10.1016/j.carpath.2018.03.002

  View details for PubMedID 29677652

  View details for PubMedCentralID PMC5940500