Paul E. Sax, MD is the Editor-in-Chief, Journal Watch HIV/AIDS Clinical Care, Clinical Director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
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(5 votes, average: 4.20 out of 5)This little nugget came up recently, found by our Journal Watch Executive Editor: Preliminary research suggests that a patch could deliver an AIDS drug to patients … The researchers successfully used transdermal patches to administer 96 percent of an AIDS drug to simulated skin over a week. “Still, the important limitation of pills, regardless of how [...]
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)From the FDA comes this news: FDA notified healthcare professionals and the public that on October 25, 2011, Eli Lilly and Company announced a worldwide voluntary market withdrawal of Xigris [drotrecogin alfa (activated)]. In a recently completed clinical trial (PROWESS-SHOCK trial), Xigris failed to show a survival benefit for patients with severe sepsis and septic [...]
(4 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)From the pages of the New York Times, courtesy of ProMED, comes this case report: An Australian man has been hospitalized for more than a month in serious condition as a result of eating two garden slugs on a dare…The 21-year-old Sydney man apparently contracted a rat lungworm parasite from the slugs, which pick it [...]
(1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)Three key papers on timing of ART in patients with TB have just been published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Fortunately, Carlos Del Rio has done a bang-up job summarizing them in Journal Watch AIDS Clinical Care. And if you’re wondering how we got our title for Carlos’ piece, here’s an e-mail between our Executive Editor [...]
(3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)World Series time, hence the baseball reference in the title. (Doesn’t take much.) But over in Lancet Infectious Diseases — which has turned out to be a terrific journal, by the way — there’s a study reminding us that advances in HIV treatment in the late 2000s were truly spectacular. The goal of the paper [...]
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)From the pages of Lancet Infectious Diseases, a study from Africa: We aimed to assess the association between hormonal contraceptive use and risk of HIV-1 acquisition by women and HIV-1 transmission from HIV-1-infected women to their male partners … Among 1314 couples in which the HIV-1-seronegative partner was female, rates of HIV-1 acquisition were 6·61 [...]
(4 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)If you’re looking for a good way to pass the time while running errands, traveling, or walking to work, I highly recommend the Freakonomics podcasts, which have taught me all sorts of interesting things. Such as the fact that suicide is more common than murder in the USA, but gets way less attention. And how [...]
(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)As we await the enrollment, analysis, and results of the START study — which is randomizing patients with CD4>500 to start HIV therapy vs waiting until the CD4 falls to 350 — much of the research on “when to start” ART in patients with high CD4′s comes from observational studies. Several have already been published [...]
