HIV and ID Observations

July 17th, 2025

Ceftriaxone Is a Narrow Antibiotic Now — and Other Musings

In no particular order, 20 things I’ve found interesting lately — a mix of ID (mostly), language quirks, clinical stuff, even tennis, and an apology (#21) at the very end. Bonus videos embedded because we all need a break. 1. Isn’t it amazing how, over time, an antibiotic once considered “broad spectrum” later becomes the […]

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July 7th, 2025

Two Pandemics, Compared: Reflections on HIV and COVID-19

“Dr. Sax, what’s it like to have lived through two pandemics as an ID doctor?” The question came from a brand-new intern during afternoon sign-out. I took a breath — because wow, were they different. HIV: It Felt Like A Calling, One Miraculously Rewarded I started my internship in 1987, six years after the first […]

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June 27th, 2025

The Mystery of the Isolated Hepatitis B Core Antibody, Solved

(A post inspired by years of doing eConsults, an extremely common query about hepatitis B testing, and the latest BritBox series, “Core Antibody Confidential,” starring a grizzled detective with a faded suit and a haunted past.) Your electronic medical record lists “deficiencies” in health care maintenance for one of your patients, so you order hepatitis B […]

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June 20th, 2025

Federal HIV Guidelines Face a Shutdown — A Critical Loss for Clinicians and Patients

Each week, our HIV clinical group gathers to review active patients, share updates, and celebrate good news. On our whiteboard, we list four columns: Inpatients, Outpatients, Issues, and Celebrations. This week, under “Issues,” one of my colleagues wrote: HIV Guidelines:  ☹️ Yes, you read that right. This week, we learned that the federal HIV guidelines — long […]

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March 22nd, 2025

Really Rapid Review: CROI 2025 San Francisco

Wow, that was an interesting conference — in ways both good and bad. The good part was the content, as the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) is our leading HIV research conference. There was plenty of interesting stuff. The not-so-good part was the stunned state of many HIV clinicians and researchers. So much of […]

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February 6th, 2025

Could This Be the End of PEPFAR?

Short email from a longtime colleague, working in Africa at a PEPFAR site: Without USAID, PEPFAR is essentially dead. I got chills reading this. PEPFAR, the abbreviation for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, started in 2003 under the direction of President George W. Bush. To say it’s been a resounding success undersells the impact of the […]

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December 28th, 2024

Notes from a Trip to China

Here are some observations from a recent trip to China, a country I’d never visited before. It was an 8-day trip related to my editor role at Clinical Infectious Diseases (there is a Chinese edition) and my particular area of focus within Infectious Diseases (HIV), so I’ll start with some epidemiology and medical stuff and […]

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August 19th, 2024

More on Munich and the 25th Annual International AIDS Conference

Longtime readers may note the absence of this year’s Really Rapid Review™ (RRR) of the latest big HIV conference, the one that just happened in Munich. These RRR posts have been a regular on this site for a gazillion years, give or take a few, with a brief break during the peak of the pandemic. My […]

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July 25th, 2024

Lenacapavir PrEP Trial Brings Down the House at the International AIDS Conference

Yesterday, at the 2024 AIDS Conference in Munich, we experienced one of those thrilling moments you always hope for when attending a scientific conference. Dr. Linda-Gail Bekker, speaking on behalf of the study investigators, presented the data on the PURPOSE-1 study of HIV prevention using twice-yearly injectable lenacapavir; results were simultaneously published in the New England […]

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June 20th, 2024

Early Heatwave ID Link-o-Rama

We’ll get to the links in a moment, but first, a little poll. You might have heard that there’s a new Editor-in-Chief at NEJM Journal Watch, Dr. Raja-Elie Abdulnour. We met recently, and discussed this column or blog or newsletter or whatever you want to call it. A topic came up that we’ve been wondering about […]

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