An ongoing dialogue on HIV/AIDS, infectious diseases,
November 30th, 2008
How to End the HIV Epidemic
Answer: Put everyone on treatment. Conspicuously absent for decades, the prevention part of the “when to start antiviral therapy?” question has now moved front and center in two recent papers: In this week’s Lancet, a group from the WHO estimated what would happen if there were annual universal HIV testing, and then immediate treatment for all […]
November 25th, 2008
Coming Soon: A Great Advance in TB Diagnostics
An all-too-frequent problem in the ID clinical world is the case where tuberculosis is possibly the diagnosis, but confirming it is difficult, or impossible. Now, in a scientific breakthrough of such magnitude that it warranted front page coverage in our local newspaper, I am pleased to report that we may have a solution: giant rats. Yes, giant […]
November 22nd, 2008
“Salvage” Rx for HIV: Macro Good News, Micro Bad News
I’ve written before how the number of treatment experienced patients who have no options for successful therapy has dwindled to a tiny — but unfortunate — few. Darunavir, maraviroc, raltegravir, and etravirine (in order of FDA approval) are that good. Two presentations at recent scientific meetings confirmed the staggering efficacy of these newer drugs. Notably, both […]
November 17th, 2008
Promising C diff Rx, and Google as Surveillance Tool
A few items from recent ID/HIV news: Bad enough when it happens once, relapsing C diff is one of the modern plagues for which our bag of tricks sometimes comes up woefully short. (Anything that tests stool transplants as a therapy is pretty desperate.) Here was some bright news on the treatment front, however: an experimental […]
November 10th, 2008
Yes, Just a Case Report, but Incredibly Cool
At this year’s Retrovirus Conference (was it really this year’s conference, seems like much longer ago than that), there was a poster presentation summarizing a very unusual case. A man with HIV, stable on antiretroviral therapy, developed acute leukemia. He underwent an allogeneic bone marrow transplant — here’s the kicker — from a donor who […]
November 2nd, 2008
The Big HIV News from ICAAC/IDSA
Tons of interesting stuff at this year’s combined ICAAC/IDSA meeting, most of it in non-HIV related Infectious Diseases. In aggregate, literally hundreds of posters, presentations, and symposia on MRSA, C diff, osteomyelitis, complicated UTIs, hospital-acquired pneumonia, antibiotic resistance … It’s a great meeting to catch up on general ID, and the literature review sessions alone […]