HIV and ID Observations

January 17th, 2009

Salmonella, CDC, and How to Prevent a Cold

Today’s ID/HIV Link-o-Rama is being brought to you from the frozen tundra of Boston, MA: This past summer’s salmonella outbreak that sickened more than 1000 people was linked to raw jalapeno and serrano peppers.  In the current one, the suspected culprit is contaminated peanut butter.  Aside from the fact that raw hot peppers and peanut butter […]

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January 4th, 2009

Top Stories in HIV Medicine

Happy New Year! In the spirit of list-making that seems to permeate the world right about this time, we’ve just published our own list over at AIDS Clinical Care.  Check it out — our editorial board this year did a superb job of summarizing the field. I have a strong feeling that next year’s version […]

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December 31st, 2008

Free Antibiotics!!!

Yes, the northeast supermarket/pharmacy chain Stop & Shop will now offer antibiotics — for free.  (And they are not the first.  Take a look at this amazing advertisement.) Says Stop & Shop’s “consumer advisor” Andrea Astrachan: Stop & Shop pharmacies are committed to improving the health and wellness in our communities during the winter season when families are […]

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December 29th, 2008

Required Reading: Introducing the “iPatient”

Many HIV/ID specialists first heard of Abraham Verghese from his book My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story, which was published in 1994.  He told us what it was like to be a newly-minted ID doctor, thrust into treating the first cases of HIV/AIDS in a remote town in Tennessee during the mid-1980s. Compelling stuff — […]

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December 23rd, 2008

Flu Resistance to Oseltamivir: The Bugs Win Again

I must admit, the recent report that 49 of the 50 H1N1 flu viruses tested by the CDC are resistant to oseltamivir caught me by surprise.  For the non-math majors among the readership, that’s a 98% resistance rate.  Yikes. Actually, the rate of resistance is so high that at first I didn’t believe it when my […]

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December 19th, 2008

Infectious Disease in the ICU: Help Please? Part I

I am currently attending on the inpatient service, which means I spend a good chunk of my day seeing new ID consults and rounding on follow-ups.  As I’m sure is true in most hospitals, many of these consults are from the intensive care units (ICUs).  After 18 years in this ID business, I confess I still find myself quite […]

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December 10th, 2008

Unintended Consequences of ART “Rollout”

According to this BBC article, teenagers in South Africa are grinding up antiretrovirals and then smoking them for their “hallucinogenic and relaxing effect”.  (Apologies for the pun on the title.) It’s impossible to tell with a report like this how widespread the practice is, but it’s potentially worrisome.  And no mention in the article which antivirals are […]

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December 4th, 2008

More Support for HIV Screening

On Monday December 1 — World AIDS Day, if you’re keeping track — the American College of Physicians released a position paper supporting routine HIV screening for adolescents and adults in the United States.  (If you don’t want to read the whole thing, we’ll have a perfectly-executed summary by the inimitable Abbie Zuger on our AIDS […]

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November 30th, 2008

How to End the HIV Epidemic

Answer:  Put everyone on treatment. Conspicuously absent for decades, the prevention part of the “when to start antiviral therapy?” question has now moved front and center in two recent papers:  In this week’s Lancet, a group from the WHO estimated what would happen if there were annual universal HIV testing, and then immediate treatment for […]

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November 25th, 2008

Coming Soon: A Great Advance in TB Diagnostics

An all-too-frequent problem in the ID clinical world is the case where tuberculosis is possibly the diagnosis, but confirming it is difficult, or impossible. Now, in a scientific breakthrough of such magnitude that it warranted front page coverage in our local newspaper, I am pleased to report that we may have a solution: giant rats. Yes, […]

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