HIV and ID Observations

September 11th, 2016

Poll: More on Morgans, and Vote on Your Favorite Cartoon Caption

During my last post on the new HIV testing algorithm, I mentioned that I’d recently met a doctor named “Morgan” for the first time. I also provided actual data why this might be an unusual name for a doctor today, but, rarity notwithstanding, we should anticipate more examples of “Morgan —-, MD” soon. At the end of […]

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September 4th, 2016

The Most Common Question About the New HIV Testing Algorithm, Answered

A primary care doctor in the Boston area recently emailed me this question: Hi Paul, A 28yo woman had a positive 4th gen +Ag/Ab assay, but a negative HIV-1/2 differentiation assay and negative HIV viral load. She had no signs of acute HIV, but is not using condoms with her partner, whose HIV status she doesn’t know. We repeated the test […]

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August 27th, 2016

ID Cartoon Caption Contest #1 Winner — and a New Contest for the End of Summer

All blogs worth the price of admission have a sidebar, and this one is no exception. Critical components include (but are not limited to) the following: The Option to Subscribe — Go ahead, you know you want to. It’s right over there to the right. Just enter your email address and click subscribe — no username, password, or […]

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August 19th, 2016

Pre-Vacation Scramble

If you search “Are vacations good for you?,” you’ll find overwhelming support for time off. It’s as if journalists and the travel industry were in cahoots, together trying to urge us to take vacations, the longer or more frequent the better. Hey, I get it. Time to reconnect with family and friends, to recharge those batteries, to get a […]

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August 15th, 2016

Just Wondering: Quick ID Questions to Ponder On a Hot Summer Day

On a lazy, brutally hot summer day, here are some more “quick questions” to think about as you hope for a cool breeze to bring relief from the stultifying (love that word) heat: How soon will we be able to look back at contact precautions for MRSA and VRE and laugh at our folly? Are we again recommending antibiotics after incision […]

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August 6th, 2016

Fishy, Fishy, Fishy, Fish!

I received this exciting offer recently: Re:  Fish Disease — Manuscript Invitation Dear Dr. Paul E Sax, Greetings for the good day! We gladly invite you and your colleagues to contribute the articles on the topic Fish Disease in Johnson Journal of Aquaculture and Research of Johnson Publishers. During our past two volumes, we had an excellent and fruitful cooperation, especially with our Editorial […]

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July 31st, 2016

Summertime Pre-Olympics ID Link-o-Rama

If you’re wondering what to do between the end of the presidential conventions, the baseball trade deadline tomorrow, and the start of the Summer Olympics, here are a few ID/HIV related items to contemplate: Non-travel related Zika arrives in Florida. Start getting used to seeing more of that obscure word “autochthonous”.  The uncertainty was not whether Zika cases would occur here — that […]

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July 24th, 2016

Really Rapid Review — AIDS 2016, Durban

The International AIDS Conference returned this year to Durban, South Africa, where it was famously first held in 2000. At that time the HIV epidemic was exploding in South Africa; funding for HIV treatment was essentially non-existent, and there was ongoing HIV denialism quite openly from some very influential figures in the South African government (including the President). […]

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July 14th, 2016

Must-Read Item: This Year’s JAMA HIV/AIDS Issue

The folks over at the Journal of the American Medical Association have been doing a periodic HIV/AIDS themed issue for years, generally around the time of the International AIDS Conference. The latest issue is out this week, and it’s terrific. Here are some highlights: In serodiscordant couples practicing “condomless sex”, there were zero transmissions if the infected partner […]

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June 25th, 2016

ID Cartoon Caption Contest Closed — Time to Vote

The response to our First Ever ID Cartoon Caption Contest was gratifyingly brisk, with hundreds of entries. Not going to lie about this — we were somewhat concerned the response would be silence … you know, as in <<crickets>> … but you readers proved very much up to the task, with numerous funny suggestions. Our sophisticated computer algorithm has […]

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