Archive for July, 2008

July 29th, 2008

Antiretroviral Rounds: Immediate ART After an OI — Are We There Yet?

A few things have been guaranteed to get widely divergent views among HIV specialists — and one of them was when to start antiretroviral therapy in someone presenting with an acute OI.  However, in the latest Antiretroviral Rounds, our two experts (Raphy Landovitz and Phil Grant/Andrew Zolopa) kind of agreed.  They’d start immediately.    At least that’s […]


July 25th, 2008

Word salad: Jalapenos, abacavir, doripenem, and PAVE

Some miscellaneous recent items from the ID/HIV world jumbling around this Friday: Tomatoes are off the hook — it’s the jalapenos that likely caused the recent salmonella outbreak.  Since this is the only time of year that tomatoes are even edible in this part of the world, I for one am quite relieved.  I am sure many […]


July 19th, 2008

“Floxins” and the black-box warning: Anyone notice? Anyone care?

Fluoroquinolones — the “floxins”, every medical house officer’s favorite antibiotic class — will carry a black-box warning about the risk of tendinitis and tendon rupture. We’ve known about this side effect for years, why now the change? In FDA speak: FDA’s recent evaluation of the medical literature and the post-marketing adverse event reports submitted to the […]


July 11th, 2008

M184V: So many options, but does that include TDF/FTC/EFV?

Co-formulated TDF/FTC/EFV (Atripla) is a nifty bit of pharmacologic packaging (ever so much more so since it involves collaboration between two different pharmaceutical companies, ahem) — and our patients have noticed.  All of us who practice HIV medicine have been asked for the “one pill” treatment; often these requests make sense, sometimes they don’t. It’s easy to say […]


July 10th, 2008

CROI 2009: Feb 8-11, Montreal

Last month I wrote about the annual mystery surrounding the date and location of the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, or CROI. Mystery solved:  February 8-11, 2009, Montreal. (Small suggestion to the conference organizers:  perhaps start working on date/venue for 2010 now?)


July 6th, 2008

HIV Testing: The Bronx is Up …

So the New York City Public Health Department would like to have every adult living in the Bronx tested for HIV.  The  Times coverage of the effort cites the best reason for reason for such a move — the high death rates from the disease, and the cause: Public health officials attribute this [the deaths] to people […]


July 4th, 2008

Announcement: CROI 2009 Date Still Not Announced

As I wrote last month, the date and location of the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) each year is an annual mystery of legendary proportions.  As of July 4, 2009, the mystery continues. Constructive criticism for the conference organizers:  why not start working on the date/location for the 2010 meeting now?


HIV Information: Author Paul Sax, M.D.

Paul E. Sax, MD

Contributing Editor

NEJM Journal Watch
Infectious Diseases

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