HIV and ID Observations

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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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June 4th, 2015

A Slightly Less Painful Way to Learn the Three-Letter Abbreviations for HIV Meds

One of the stupid things about being an HIV/ID specialist is the highly arcane code we use to abbreviate HIV treatments. Why was zidovudine originally AZT, and now ZDV? Why is lamivudine 3TC? And tenofovir TDF? Of course there are legitimate biochemical reasons why these are the right abbreviations, but they are lost to most of us who do […]

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May 27th, 2015

START is STOPPED: Study Confirms HIV Treatment Is Beneficial for All, Even Those with High CD4 Cell Counts

The Strategic Timing of AntiRetroviral Treatment (START) study began in 2009, enrolling over 4000 asymptomatic people with HIV and CD4 cell counts > 500, and randomizing them to immediate ART or to wait until the count dropped to 350. Now, from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases comes this important announcement: Though the study was expected […]

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May 21st, 2015

Which Infectious Diseases Do We Fear Too Much? Which Not Enough?

My friend (and HIV/ID colleague) Mauro Schechter sent me a funny email the other day — from Brazil, where he lives and works: I just read your post and watched the news clip about Powassan. And you still wonder why we think you Americans are paranoid disease freaks? 65 cases in 12 years in a population of 350 […]

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May 13th, 2015

WHO Guidelines on Naming Diseases Are Well-Meaning, Sensible — But Kind of Boring

From the World Health Organization (WHO), a recommendation on how to name a new disease: The best practices state that a disease name should consist of generic descriptive terms, based on the symptoms that the disease causes (e.g. respiratory disease, neurologic syndrome, watery diarrhoea) and more specific descriptive terms when robust information is available on how […]

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