Dr. A.R Anand

Senior Associate Professor, Department of Microbiology, Sankara Nethralaya, Chennai, India

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Dr. Anand is presently a Senior Associate Professor and Microbiologist at Sankara Nethralaya. In addition to running the diagnostic microbiology laboratory at the hospital, he is involved in research projects on ocular infectious diseases. During his scientific career, he has extensive experience in studying the pathogenesis and evaluating newer diagnostic techniques in various types of infectious diseases. As a Ph.D. student at Sankara Nethralaya, he worked on the molecular diagnosis of infectious endophthalmitis developing PCR-based techniques targeting bacteria and fungi that cause endophthalmitis. He completed his post-doctoral training at Jules Stein Eye Institute, UCLA and Harvard Medical School and was later a junior faculty at Ohio State University. During this time, he gathered extensive expertise in studying the pathogenesis of viral infections such as HIV and Hepatitis C as well as Gram-negative sepsis, making significant contributions in the field. He obtained the prestigious DBT-Ramalingaswami re-entry fellowship and was a scientist at the National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis (ICMR), Chennai, before joining back at Sankara Nethralaya. Dr. Anand has been a lead-author publications in several peer-reviewed publications in high-impact journals (including Blood, Journal of Immunology, AIDS, Retrovirology and Ophthalmology) and his research has provided new insights into the pathogenesis and diagnosis of various infectious diseases. His current research interests include studying the pathogenesis and molecular diagnosis of ocular infections, specifically endophthalmitis and keratitis. He is currently funded by extramural grants from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR

  1. Articles 1 Jun 2021 10 min read

    Ten Microbiological Facts on Mucormycosis All Ophthalmologists Should Know

    The present overview highlights major microbiological aspects of mucormycosis and attempts to increase the awareness of this ubiquitous group of fungi that are responsible for the difficult-to-manage infections presently being encountered in the setting of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. 1. What is Mucormycosis and why is mucormycosis emerging as a serious threat in the present COVID-19 pandemic? Mucormycosis (previously called zygomycosis; sometimes called black fungus infection) is a serious, but rare fungal infection caused by a group of molds belonging to the order Mucorales(1). Mucormycosis is a fulminant disease with high rates of morbidity and mortality that mainly affects immunocompromised patients. Depending on the location of the infection, the mucormycosis can be rhino-orbito-cerebral (most common), pulmonary, gastrointestinal, cutaneous, or disseminated. Although it has a low incidence rate, varying from 0.005 to 1.7 per million population, a sudden rise in cases of rhino-or

    Dr. A.R Anand