Juan C. Salazar, MD, MPH, FAAP

Education

Education: MD, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 1986
MPH, University of Minnesota Medical School, 1995
Residency: Pediatrics, University of Connecticut, Pediatrics, 1988-1992
Fellowship: Pediatric Infectious Diseases, University of Minnesota, 1992-1995

Board Certifications

Faculty Appointment

Chair, Department of Pediatrics and Professor of Pediatrics, University of Connecticut School of Medicine

Clinical Expertise

Juan Carlos Salazar, MD, MPH, is Professor and Chair of Pediatrics at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine and Executive Vice President and Physician-in-Chief at Connecticut Children’s.

In addition to serving in these roles, Dr. Salazar has led the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Immunology at Connecticut Children’s and has been nationally and internationally recognized for both his outstanding clinical care and his innovative research work. Dr. Salazar has received several National Institutes of Health grants to study the human innate immune response to Borrelia burgdorferi and Treponema pallidum, the causative agents of Lyme disease and syphilis respectively.  He is currently funded by the NIH to develop a first of its kind syphilis vaccine. The NIH funded U-19 project includes investigators in China, Malawi, Colombia and the US. Most recently his team received funding from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) to study the pathogenesis of COVID-19 and the multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), a rare but serious condition associated with COVID-19.  He has published over 100 peer reviewed articles and book chapters and has served in multiple scientific review panels at the NIH.

Dr. Salazar also directs the Pediatric and Youth HIV program at the Medical Center. His team has promoted and facilitated regional STD and HIV-prevention programs for at-risk high school youth. Dr. Salazar is the current recipient of Ryan White Care Act federal funding to coordinate and provide statewide HIV treatment and prevention services for women, infants, children and youth. He has conducted several NIH and pharmaceutical industry sponsored pediatric and adolescent HIV clinical trials and long-term follow-up studies.

He received his medical degree from the Universidad Javeriana, in Bogota, Colombia, and his MPH from the University of Minnesota. He completed a residency in Pediatrics at the University of Connecticut Health Center, where he also served as chief resident, and a post-doctoral fellowship in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Minnesota.  He is board certified in both Pediatrics and Pediatric Infectious Diseases.

Selected Publications

• Jonathan Y. Lam, Samantha C. Roberts, Chisato Shimizu, Emelio Bainto, Nipha Sivilay, Adriana H. Tremoulet, Michael A. Gardiner, John T. Kanegaye, Alexander H. Hogan, Juan C. Salazar, Sindhu Mohandas, Jacqueline R. Szmuszkovicz, Simran Mahanta, Audrey Dionne, Jane W. Newburger, Emily Ansusinha, Roberta L. DeBiasi, Shiying Hao, Xuefeng B. Ling, Harvey J. Cohen, Shamim Nemati, Jane C. Burns, the Pediatric Emergency Medicine Kawasaki Disease Research Group, the CHARMS Study Group.  Multicenter Validation of a Machine Learning Algorithm for Diagnosing Pediatric Patients with Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome and Kawasaki Disease.  doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.02.07.21268280, Jan 2022

• Phamduy TT, Smith S, Herbest KW, Phamduy PT, Brimacombe M, Hogan AH, Salazar JC, and Sturm J.  Kawasaki Disease in the United StTes 2016-2020:  A Comparison of Before and During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Era.  Pediatr Infect Dis J. 2021 Aug 10. doi: 10.1097/INF.0000000000003289. Online ahead of print. PMID: 34382611

   

• Dailey J, Kozhaya L, Dogan M, Hopkins D, Lapin B, Herbst K, Brimacombe M, Grandonico K, Karabacak F, Schreiber J, Liang B, Salazar JC, Unutmaz D, Hyams JS.  Antibody Responses to SARS-CoV-2 after Infection or Vaccination in Children and Young Adults with Inflammatory Bowel Disease.  Inflamm Bowel Dis. 2021 Sep 16:izab207. doi: 10.1093/ibd/izab207. Online ahead of print. PMID: 34528661

• Benjamin SJ, Hawley KL, Vera-Licona P, La Vake, CJ, Cervantes JL, Ruan Y, Radolf JD, and Salazar JC. Macrophage mediated recognition and clearance of Borrelia burgdorferi elicits MyD88-dependent and -independent phagosomal signals that contribute to phagocytosis and inflammation. BMC Immunol. 2021 May 17;22(1):32. doi: 10.1186/s12865-021-00418-8. PMID: 34000990

• Cervantes JL, Oak E, Garcia J, Liu H, Lorenzini PA, Batra D, Chhabra A, Salazar JC, Xavier R. Vitamin D modulates human macrophage response to Mycobacterium tuberculosis DNA. Tuberculosis (Edinb). 2019 May;116S:S131-S137. doi: 10.1016/j.tube.2019.04.021. PMID: 31085128

• Trujillo R, Cervantes JL, Hawley K, Cruz AR, Babappor S, Murphy M, Dadras SS, Salazar JC. Inflammation and immune evasion coexist in Treponema pallidum–infected skin. JAAD Case Rep. 2018 Apr 30;4(5):462-464. doi: 10.1016/j.jdcr.2018.03.011. PMID: 29984283

• Kumar S, Caimano MJ, Anand A, Dey A, Hawley KL, LeDoyt ME, La Vake CJ, Cruz AR, Ramirez LG, Paštěková L, Bezsonova I, Šmajs D, Salazar JC, Radolf JD. Sequence Variation of Rare Outer Membrane Protein β-Barrel Domains in Clinical Strains Provides Insights into the Evolution of Treponema pallidum subsp. pallidum, the Syphilis Spirochete. MBio. 2018 Jun 12;9(3). pii: e01006-18. doi: 10.1128/mBio.01006-18

• Flores G, Salazar JC. Immigrant Latino Children and the Limits of Questionnaires in Capturing Adverse Childhood Events. Pediatrics. 2017 Oct 9. pii: e20172842. doi: 10.1542/peds.2017-2842. [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 28993444

• Hawley, K, Cruz, AR, Benjamin, S, La Vake, C, Le Doyt, M, Mandich, D, Fiel-Gann, M, Cervantes, JL, Ramirez LG, Radolf, JD and Salazar, JC.  IFNγ enhances CD64 ediated phagocytosis of human syphilitic serum opsonized Treponema pallidum by human macrophages Front. Immunol., 05 October 2017 https://doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2017.01227

• Qiu, Z, Cervantes JL, Cicek BB, Mukherjee S, Venkatesh M, Maher LA, Salazar JC. Mani S and Khanna K.Pregnane X Receptor Regulates Pathogen-Induced Inflammation and Host Defense against an Intracellular Bacterial Infection through Toll-like Receptor 4. Sci. Rep. 6, 31936; doi: 10.1038/srep31936 (2016)

• Seña AC, Zhnag XH, Li T, Zheng HP, Yang B, Yang LG, Salazar JC, Cohen MS, Moody A, Radolf JD and Tucker JD.  A systematic review of serological outcomes after syphilis treatment in HIV-infected and HIV-uninfected persons: rethinking the significance of serological non-responsiveness and the serofast state after therapy. BMC Infectious Diseases, September 2015.

• Luthra A, Anand A, Hawley H, LeDoyt M, La Vake C, Caimano M, Cruz A, Salazar JC and Radolf JD.  A homology model reveals novel structural features and an immunodominant surface loop/opsonic target in the Treponema pallidum BamA ortholog TP0326.  J Bacteriol. 2015 Mar 30. pii: JB.00086-15.

• Cervantes JL, Hawley KL, Benjamin SJ, Weinerman B, Luu SM, Salazar JC. Phagosomal TLR signaling upon Borrelia burgdorferi infection. Front Cell Infect Microbiol. 2014 May 20;4:55. doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2014.00055. eCollection 2014. PMC4033037.