HIV and ID Observations

March 30th, 2011

Journal Club: Even When You Think You Should Wait, It’s Probably Time to Start

Two papers just published in AIDS with relevance to the “when to start” antiretroviral therapy question. Both apply to certain patients in whom we might consider waiting to start treatment– but both these studies suggest we do otherwise. The first applies to the patients with slooooow CD4 decline. Perhaps so slow that both you and your patient […]

---

March 26th, 2011

Zoster Vaccine for Age 50 and Up? A Resounding “Yea” Vote Here

I was getting off the elevator at the hospital the other day, and a cardiologist greeted me with the phrase every ID doctor in the world will instantly recognize: Can I ask you a quick question? It was actually a series of questions, and, as is often the case, it wasn’t so “quick”.  But I was happy […]

---

March 18th, 2011

Friday Fosfomycins

Today’s ID/HIV comments and links are named after every ID specialist’s favorite new toy for UTIs. This HIV transmission from a kidney donor is getting quite a bit of media play, as such complications always do.  I was at a meeting this AM when one of my colleagues (an endocrinologist) commented how horrible she thought it […]

---

March 8th, 2011

Really Rapid Review of CROI 2011 — and No CROI 2012 Dates

With CROI 2011 now officially over, I offer below the following Really Rapid Review™ for ID/HIV Specialists with limited time — or for those who said they went to the conference but spent the entire week shopping in the Prudential Mall and eating at Legal Seafood: Lots on PrEP.  Bottom line — it works if you take […]

---

March 1st, 2011

Like It or Not, PrEP Enters the Clinic

Since the publication of iPrEx, the hypothetical decision about whether to prescribe pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) has become a practical reality. As a result, we’ve posted a case on the Journal Watch/AIDS Clinical Care site, describing someone who requests intermittent pre-exposure prophylaxis to prevent HIV. It’s a high-risk, HIV-negative man who’s been treated several times with post-exposure prophylaxis. The case […]

---