HIV and ID Observations

February 17th, 2020

Short-Course Treatment of Latent TB, Combination Therapy for Staph Bacteremia, Adult Vaccine Guidelines, Novel Antifungals, and Others — A Non-COVID-19 ID Link-o-Rama

There’s so much out there right now on COVID-19 (the disease) and SARS-CoV-2 (the virus) that the other ID news gets crowded out. Which means it’s time for non-COVID-19 ID/HIV Link-o-Rama! I haven’t done one of these in a while, so there’s plenty of material in the vaults yearning to be free. The CDC now […]

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February 9th, 2020

Should Medical Subspecialists Attend on the General Medical Service?

As I’ve written about many times on this site, one of the highlights of the year for me is when I attend on the medical service — something I’ve been doing pretty much forever. There’s a wonderful learning exchange that goes on, with my knowledge of ID being repaid in kind by the others on […]

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February 2nd, 2020

A Coronavirus ID Link-o-Rama, Because I’m Not Watching the Super Bowl

With so much of the ID-related news out there dominated by the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV, hard to type) outbreak, it seems appropriate to collect some of the more interesting or useful findings in this busy past week. Think of it as an ID Link-o-Rama — Special Novel Coronavirus Edition. As with last week’s post, an […]

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January 26th, 2020

Uncertainties Notwithstanding, Pace of Scientific Discovery in Coronavirus Outbreak Is Breathtakingly, Impressively Fast

The current novel coronavirus outbreak due to 2019-nCoV and SARS from 2002–3 share many features, including: Both are coronaviruses, genetically distinct from those that had caused infection in humans previously (most of which led to cold-like illnesses) First cases recognized in China, with subsequent international spread Source an animal reservoir — likely bats for both […]

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January 20th, 2020

Telemedicine, eConsults, and Other Remote ID Clinical Services Make So Much Sense — Why Isn’t Everyone Doing it?

The ID group at Mayo Clinic just published a small but important study on the use of remote ID telemedicine consults for hospitals that have no ID services on-site. The consults were “asynchronous”, meaning that the ID consultants at the main hospital finished them within 24 hours — they didn’t have to respond immediately. Importantly, […]

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January 13th, 2020

Diagnostic Tests for Syphilis Continue to Perplex Even the Experts: An Unanswerable Question in Infectious Diseases

Here’s a tricky clinical scenario: An elderly person with cognitive decline or some other non-specific neurologic symptom sees a clinician. Clinician sends a syphilis screen with a T. pallidum enzyme immunoassay (TP-EIA), which returns positive. Lab runs a confirmatory test — a T. pallidum particle agglutination test (TP-PA), or similar, which also returns positive. The […]

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January 6th, 2020

The Decade’s Top 10 Biggest Changes to ID Clinical Practice

Here’s a question for you ID and HIV and other clinicians out there as you start 2020 — what are the 10 biggest changes to ID/HIV clinical practice over the past 10 years? Not necessarily what are the biggest stories or biggest advances (though they certainly are eligible) — but more specifically, when you are […]

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December 30th, 2019

Welcome to Mandatory Online Module Land!

(What follows is an attempt to derive some humor from those annual online “required learnings” assigned to us each year. Because if you’re in pain, you are not alone!) Step right up, Ladies and Gentlemen! Allow me to welcome you to Mandatory Online Module Land — the fantasy theme park Health Professionals around the world […]

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December 23rd, 2019

FDA Defers Approval of First Long-Acting HIV Therapy, Surprising Everyone

We HIV/ID specialists are lucky. For over two decades, steady progress in HIV treatment brings regular excitement to our field. Some of these advances are incremental, but others represent major leaps forward. One such example of the latter is long-acting injectable therapy with cabotegravir (CAB) and rilpivirine (RPV) for maintaining viral suppression. This strategy — […]

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December 15th, 2019

Should Oseltamivir Become an Over-the-Counter Drug?

News broke last week that oseltamivir — most commonly known by its clever (expired) brand name, Tamiflu — may be heading to pharmacies soon as an over-the-counter (OTC) drug, available without a prescription. After hearing this, I immediately thought of several reasons both supporting and opposing this change — an ideal question for a poll! […]

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