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Biography
Dr Varatharaj studied medicine at Oxford and has trained in Montreal, Liverpool, and London. He came to Southampton in 2014.
He studies the interaction between infection and the brain, and in particular how this affects people with multiple sclerosis. He is the Chief Investigator of the MRC-funded SIBIMS study. He uses advanced neuroimaging techniques and has set up dynamic-contrast enhanced magnetic resonance imaging in Southampton for the measurement of blood-brain barrier health. Disturbance of the blood-brain barrier may explain why infections outside the brain can affect the function of the brain and mind.
He was also a founder of the CoroNerve Studies Group, the first nationwide surveillance programme for neurological complications of COVID-19.
He is also the Module Lead for Nervous System in undergraduate medicine.