HIV and ID Observations

August 9th, 2015

The Pain — and Potential Power — of Electronic Health Records in One Little Anecdote

Here’s a scintillating series of events that happened recently on our inpatient consult service: Reason for consult: “Treatment of UTI in a 26-year-old pregnant woman with multiple allergies.” Culture result:  Group B strep, resistant to clindamycin and nitrofurantoin. She’s been on the latter. Patient’s allergies as listed on her chart:  Penicillins, cephalosporins, sulfonamides. Plan per OB service: […]

---

August 1st, 2015

Ten Reasons to Attend Our “Infectious Diseases in Primary Care” Course

With an up-front apology for the shameless plug — sorry! — here are 10 great reasons to attend our annual postgraduate course. It’s called Infectious Diseases in Primary Care, and takes place October 14-16 here at the Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston. All the topics are clinically relevant to day-to-day practice. Look at these topics! There’s a strict […]

---

July 26th, 2015

Really Rapid Review — IAS 2015, Vancouver

Vancouver will always have a special place in HIV treatment history. It was here, in 1996, that many of us first saw the potential of combination antiretroviral therapy to control this disease. Specifically, Study 035 of AZT, 3TC, and indinavir (presented by Trip Gulick) demonstrated the astounding finding that triple therapy induced sustained virologic suppression and dramatic immunologic improvement. Could it be that not everyone […]

---

July 18th, 2015

Disrupting the Normal Microbiota Might Make Us Fat, Allergic, Asthmatic, and Lead to Celiac Disease

Over at Open Forum Infectious Diseases, I recently had the opportunity to interview Dr. Martin Blaser, Professor of Medicine and Microbiology at New York University. He’s also the Director of the Human Microbiome Project, and author of the book, Missing Microbes: How the overuse of antibiotics is fueling our modern plagues. Marty has been a long-time champion of […]

---

July 11th, 2015

Citing WHO Guidelines, Squirrels Protest Latest Virus Discovery

An open letter to the Editor-in-Chief of the New England Journal of Medicine Saturday, July 11, 2015 Dear Dr. Drazen: On behalf of the International Association of Variegated Squirrels, I am writing to protest the article that appeared in your July 9 2015 issue, entitled “A variegated squirrel bornavirus associated with fatal human encephalitis.”  We variegated squirrels believe the title […]

---

July 7th, 2015

For HIV in the USA, Not in Care Exceeds the Undiagnosed — Solutions Welcome

In last week’s post, I asked about two of the key components of the HIV care cascade — the “undiagnosed” vs the “diagnosed but not in care,” and which group was larger in the USA. Here are your answers as of now: The people who read this site are a pretty knowledgeable group when it comes to […]

---

July 1st, 2015

Undiagnosed or Not in Care? For HIV, Which Is the Bigger Problem?

These days, it’s hard to have a “closed book” examination. The information is everywhere — on your computer, your phone, your tablet — whatever screen happens to be glowing in front of you. “In the age of the internet, why be wrong?” is something my son used to say as we sat at the dinner table, grappling […]

---

June 24th, 2015

Epidemic of Republican Presidential Candidates Shows No Signs of Abating

Chilling news from The Borowitz Report: The number of official candidates for the 2016 Republican Presidential nomination has risen to thirteen, according to officials at the Centers for Disease Control… “It might have been misplaced optimism on our part, but we had started to believe that this thing had been contained,” said the C.D.C. spokesman Dr. Harland […]

---

June 20th, 2015

Alex Rodriguez’ Story Reminds Me of a Case of Scientific Misconduct — Until It Doesn’t

If you’ll forgive me a bit of baseball-related rambling, there’s an incredible story going on this year with the resuscitation of Alex Rodriguez, both as a player and, even more remarkably, as a person in the public eye. Or, to quote the play-by-play announcer Michael Kay, who on Friday got it perfectly when he commented on A-Rod’s 3000th hit […]

---

June 11th, 2015

Summer Is Almost Here ID Link-o-Rama

I know, I know. You’re sick of hearing Bostonians complain about the winter we just had. But did you know that the weather here didn’t get reliably warm here until, well, this week? We all have PTSD. Don’t talk to us about anything even vaguely white, flakey, and cold. Yes, we’re afraid of refrigerated coconut. I’ll stop […]

---