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)I have a regular, highly efficient email correspondence with my mother — who never really liked talking on the phone to begin with (neither do I), so email is perfect for us. The topics we cover are mostly family stuff, and food — she’s a food writer, after all, so it might be a recipe [...]
(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)From the key “What’s New in the Guidelines” section of today’s Department of Health and Human Services update: ART is recommended for all HIV-infected individuals. The strength of this recommendation varies on the basis of pretreatment CD4 cell count. This recommendation replaces a rather confusing categorization on when to start ART that, not surprisingly, was widely [...]
(6 votes, average: 4.83 out of 5)Screening for anal cancer in men who have sex with men (MSM) — with pap smears, high resolution anoscopy, with whatever test — is quite the quagmire. As I’ve mentioned before, the proponents of screening cite the success of cervical cancer screening and the startling high rates of anal cancer among HIV+ MSM as reason [...]
(3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)As some of you might have noticed, due to a web snafu here at Mass Medical Society, I was briefly a gastroenterologist earlier this week: Unfortunately, I don’t think this translated in a higher paycheck, even though scoping is much more lucrative than doing ID consults. And while HIV and ID Observations is admittedly a [...]
(10 votes, average: 4.70 out of 5)Some highly subjective highlights — a Really Rapid Review™– from this year’s Number One Greatest Super Scientific HIV Conference, the 19th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), which ended last week in Seattle: Need more evidence that maintaining a CD4 cell count > 500 is beneficial? This compelling analysis from the SMART and ESPRIT studies found [...]
(3 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)On the eve of the 19th Retroconference, or “CROI” — and I’m headed to Seattle right this moment — two baseball players have intersected with the world of Infectious Diseases. Ike Davis of the Mets has Coccidioidomycosis (Valley Fever). And Ryan Howard of the Phillies has an infection after achilles tendon surgery. Bottom line, it’s quite [...]
(7 votes, average: 4.57 out of 5)Every time I cover HIV prevention in a lecture, it’s always kind of embarrassing to cite the “official” post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) guidelines, which are here (non-occupational) and here (occupational). That’s right, they were last updated in 2005, the year of Hurricane Katrina. Yes — more than six years ago. The alternative choices seem particularly curious (read: [...]
