Publications by authors named "Rafael Calderon-Candelario"

Hospital readmission within 30 days poses challenges for healthcare providers, policymakers, and patients because of its impact on care quality, costs, and outcomes. Patients with interstitial lung disease (ILD) are particularly affected by readmission, which is associated with increased morbidity and mortality and reduced quality of life. Because small sample sizes have hindered previous studies, this study seeks to address this gap in knowledge by examining a large-scale dataset.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Black adults experience higher rates of asthma but are often studied as a uniform group, ignoring cultural differences among subgroups.
  • The study aimed to assess asthma-related health outcomes across various Black ethnic subgroups by comparing multiethnic Black (ME/B) and African American (AA/B) participants.
  • Results showed that ME/B participants had more emergency room visits and higher use of systemic corticosteroids for asthma than AA/B participants, particularly among Puerto Rican Black Latinx individuals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A 49-year-old man was admitted with altered mental status, high-grade fevers, tachycardia and leucocytosis. Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) was purulent with a markedly elevated nucleated cell count with neutrophilic predominance, elevated protein and low glucose. CSF gram stain was negative.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Black and Latinx adults with moderate-to-severe asthma were involved in a trial comparing a patient-activated inhaled glucocorticoid strategy (intervention) against usual care to address high asthma burdens in these populations.
  • The results showed that the intervention group experienced fewer severe asthma exacerbations (0.69 vs. 0.82) and improved asthma control over time compared to the usual-care group.
  • The intervention also led to a reduction in missed days due to asthma, enhancing participants' quality of life and indicating a potential benefit for tailored asthma management strategies in these communities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Asthma prevalence, morbidity, and mortality disproportionately impact African American/Black (AA/B) and Hispanic/Latinx (H/L) communities. Adherence to daily inhaled corticosteroid (ICS), recommended by asthma guidelines in all but the mildest cases of asthma, is generally poor. As-needed ICS has shown promise as a patient-empowering asthma management strategy, but it has not been rigorously studied in AA/B or H/L patients or in a real-world setting.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The cancer mortality-to-incidence ratio (MIR) can serve as a population-based indicator for cancer care outcomes. In the US, evaluation of lung cancer survival by individual states has not been evaluated. To assess the association between lung cancer survival by using MIRs and state-level health disparities in the United States.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: The Test of Incremental Respiratory Endurance (TIRE) provides a comprehensive assessment of inspiratory muscle performance by measuring maximal inspiratory pressure (MIP) over time. The integration of MIP over inspiratory duration (ID) provides the sustained maximal inspiratory pressure (SMIP). Evidence on the reliability and validity of these measurements in COPD is not currently available.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Understanding vaping patterns of electronic cigarette (EC) use is important to understand the real-life exposure to EC vapor. Long term information on vaping topography in relation to tobacco cigarette (TC) smoking cessation success has not been explored.

Methods: Observational non-blinded study where active TC smokers were asked to replace TC with EC over 4 weeks (replacement phase, RP) followed by exclusive EC use for an additional 12 weeks (maintenance phase, MP).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Toll-like receptors are transmembrane glycoproteins predominantly expressed in tissues with immune function. They are considered one of the most important pattern recognition receptor families discovered at the end of 20th century and a key aspect of the innate immune system response to infectious disease. Here we present a review of the current knowledge of individual Toll-like receptors, 1 through 13, with a focus on their role in the immune system response to mycobacterial infection.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF