HIV and ID Observations

October 6th, 2014

Back to School: Questions from “ID in Primary Care” Course

Just wrapped our our annual postgraduate course, “Infectious Diseases in Primary Care,” where each year we get together with primary care providers (doctors, nurses, PAs) and review what we hope are the most clinically relevant topics in ID. And each year we get a great bunch of questions, some of which I’ve listed below (along with […]

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September 24th, 2014

Quick Question: How Do I Fill Out This Tricky Patient Job or School Form?

From a long-term and highly respected colleague comes this challenging query: Hi Paul, One of my HIV pts, doing wonderfully well, is planning to enroll in a nursing program. She does not want to disclose her HIV status (fine with me), but the hospital requests a list of current meds which, of course, would blow her […]

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September 13th, 2014

In These Challenging Times for ID Doctors, a Little Comic Relief

I was passing a colleague in the hall the other day — he’s a general internist by training, now an important hospital administrator — and he briefly stopped me to get my take on the flurry of ID-related news bombarding the world right now. Him:  Hey, Paul, good to see you. Me:  Hi Jerry. Him:  Quite […]

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September 7th, 2014

It’s OK to Limit Who Prescribes HCV Therapy, but Insurers Shouldn’t Be Deciding

Some insurers would like to limit the prescribing of HCV treatment to gastroenterologists, hepatologists, or infectious diseases specialists. Not surprisingly, this doesn’t sit well with either the HIV Medicine Association (HIVMA) or the American Academy of HIV Medicine (AAHIVM), both of which have long acknowledged that some of the most seasoned HIV providers are generalists: “There is no medical […]

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September 3rd, 2014

How to Choose a Case for ID Case Conference

As August becomes September, ID fellows across the land are becoming increasingly skilled, heading rapidly upwards on that steep learning curve that is the first year of fellowship. With one-sixth of the year already in the books, it’s a wonderful thing to see. One potential downside to this accumulating knowledge, however, is that they start to become […]

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August 16th, 2014

Dietary Advice From Your Friendly ID Doc: Don’t Eat Garden Slugs

From the pages of Open Forum Infectious Diseases, comes this cautionary case report: Toxocariasis After Slug Ingestion Characterized by Severe Neurologic, Ocular, and Pulmonary Involvement I encourage you to read the full paper, but the short story is that a previously healthy 71-year-old man was admitted to a hospital in France with fever, cough, headaches, confusion, […]

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August 10th, 2014

Waiting (and Preparing) for Ebola

For Infectious Diseases doctors, there’s a certain life cycle to the big ID topics that make their way to the lay press, and it’s playing out right now big time with the terrible Ebola outbreak in Western Africa. It goes like this: Someone reports an outbreak in a venue like ProMED. Almost synchronously, it is covered by the […]

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July 31st, 2014

Simeprevir, Sofosbuvir, and the Limitations of the COSMOS

These are exciting times for hepatitis C treatment, as the approval of simeprevir and sofosbuvir in late 2013 have made curing this disease a whole lot easier. Since that sentence barely conveys the transformative nature of this medical advance, allow me this tortured analogy: Before simeprevir and sofosbuvir, curing hepatitis C was like making a transatlantic […]

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July 30th, 2014

Hepatitis Day “Celebration” and a Reminder

July 28 is “World Hepatitis Day” (how do they choose the dates for these things?), and I wrote a bit over on the Oxford University Press site on the incredible progress we’ve made already — with more to come. Definitely plenty of reasons to celebrate — safe and effective immunizations for hepatitis A and B, treatment […]

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July 27th, 2014

Really Rapid Review — AIDS 2014, Melbourne

For the second time — the first time was in Sydney, 2007 — the annual “summer” international AIDS conference took place in Australia, this time in Melbourne way down in the southern part of the country. I’ll note again how the crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH-17 cast a sad note over the opening sessions, and […]

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