Publications by authors named "Ajay K Varadhan"

Article Synopsis
  • The study aimed to explore the impact of socioeconomic status (SES) on the progression and outcomes of upper tract urothelial carcinoma (UTUC) in patients.
  • The research involved classifying 432 patients undergoing surgery for UTUC into "advantaged" and "disadvantaged" groups based on their area deprivation index (ADI), with comparisons made on treatment and survival outcomes.
  • Findings indicated no significant differences in tumor characteristics, recurrence-free survival (RFS), or overall survival (OS) between SES groups, suggesting improved healthcare access and management strategies may benefit disadvantaged patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is a critical skill for physicians, and EBM competency has been shown to increase implementation of best medical practices, reduce medical errors, and increase patient-centered care. Like any skill, EBM must be practiced, receiving iterative feedback to improve learners' comprehension. Having residents document patient interactions in logbooks to allow for residency program review, feedback, and documentation of competency has been previously described as a best practice within emergency medicine (EM) to document practice-based learning (PBL) competency.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • A study looked at how well prostatic artery embolization (PAE) works for men who have trouble urinating because of an enlarged prostate, even after trying another surgery.
  • Sixteen patients took part, and their prostate size was pretty big (about the size of a small orange).
  • After the treatment, the men felt much better with their urination and quality of life, and there were no bad side effects, showing that PAE is a safe option.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Effective sublingual peptide immunization requires overcoming challenges of both delivery and immunogenicity. Mucosal adjuvants, such as cyclic-dinucleotides (CDN), can promote sublingual immune responses but must be codelivered with the antigen to the epithelium for maximum effect. We designed peptide-polymer nanofibers (PEG-Q11) displaying nona-arginine (R9) at a high density to promote complexation with CDNs bidentate hydrogen-bonding with arginine side chains.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Widespread vaccination is essential to global health. Significant barriers exist to improving vaccine coverage in lower- and middle-income countries, including the costly requirements for cold-chain distribution and trained medical personnel to administer the vaccines. A heat-stable and highly porous tablet vaccine that can be administered sublingually via simple dissolution under the tongue is described.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Short peptides are poorly immunogenic when delivered sublingually - under the tongue. Nanomaterial delivery of peptides could be utilized to improve immunogenicity towards designed sublingual vaccines, but nanomaterials have not been widely successful in sublingual vaccines owing to the challenges of transport through the sublingual mucosa. Here, we report that the sublingual immunogenicity of peptides is negligible, even in the presence of sublingual adjuvants or when PEGylated, but can be dramatically enhanced by assembly into supramolecular polymer-peptide nanofibers bearing low-molecular weight PEG, optimally between 2000 and 3000 Da.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF