HIV and ID Observations

April 20th, 2013

Postexposure Prophylaxis (PEP) After Blast Injuries

From a colleague came this query: We are being consulted by surgeons who are finding within blast victims tissues from other humans. We have been offering post-exposure prophylaxis. Have you folks developed any policies re PEP for explosion victims? Welcome your thoughts, P Needless to say, the bombing victims are currently facing far greater challenges than […]

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April 5th, 2013

Another “Important Advance” in HIV Vaccine Research?

On reading this other real news about a single patient and how it may shape the future of HIV vaccine research, I decided to write the following fake news, drawing liberally on many similar stories over the years: Scientists today reported a discovery that could finally pave the way for an effective AIDS vaccine. In the study, published […]

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March 28th, 2013

Poll: How Often Do You Measure CD4 Cell Counts?

Over in Clinical Infectious Diseases, a recent study pretty much nails the fact that routine measurement of CD4 cell counts in clinically stable patients is an all but useless exercise.  As summarized by Abbie Zuger in Journal Watch, here’s the key finding: When patients with an unrelated cause for an alteration in CD4-cell count such as […]

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March 10th, 2013

Really Rapid Review — CROI 2013, Atlanta

As noted previously by Carlos del Rio in his nice summary, the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) turned 20 this year. It also made it’s first-ever stop in Atlanta, home of many things that begin with “C” — CDC (note that insiders rarely say, “the CDC”), CNN, Coca Cola, and Carlos himself. I’ll spare […]

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March 5th, 2013

Exploring the Media Fascination with the Baby Cured of HIV

As undoubtedly you’ve heard by now, there’s another person cured of HIV out there — this time, it’s a baby born to an HIV-infected mother. Here’s the story: The mother didn’t know she was HIV positive until delivery, and the baby was found to be infected by both HIV DNA and RNA right at birth. […]

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March 3rd, 2013

It’s Not Safe Sex If You’ve Just Had the Smallpox Vaccine

One of my more memorable teachers used to love warning us about the hazards of sex. No, this wasn’t in my 8th grade health class — this was during my first year of Infectious Diseases fellowship, and the teacher was one of our highly experienced attending physicians, now retired. To him, sex carried limitless infectious risks. He […]

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February 28th, 2013

Guest Post: CROI at 20 — A Look Back

The inimitable Carlos del Rio looks back at our premier scientific meeting, the annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), which starts this Sunday: CROI, which started as a small national conference held in a hotel in Washington DC, will hold its 20th meeting this year . When CROI first took place, we had just returned from Berlin, and HIV scientists […]

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February 17th, 2013

An Adherence Intervention That Works — But There’s a Catch

In a previous post, we reviewed the various flavors of medication non-adherence, and concluded with this tantalizing line: Next up:  An Adherence Intervention that Actually Works — But There’s a Catch Well here it is, just published online in JAMA Internal Medicine. Dr. Robert Gross (a long-time HIV adherence researcher from U Penn) and colleagues enrolled 180 patients […]

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February 13th, 2013

Medication Adherence: The Final Frontier

Treatment of HIV has become so amazingly effective that when it fails, it’s no overstatement to say that it’s usually because the patient is not taking the medications.  There are all kinds of provider-related reasons for this — inadequate patient education, prescribing and dispensing errors, failure to address language or education deficits — but here […]

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January 9th, 2013

HIV Exceptionalism is Alive and Well — and That’s Too Bad

Email exchange with a colleague who works at one of our community health clinics: Guy:  Hi Paul, your patient 17432862 [that’s a made-up medical record number] came to our walk-in clinic with a rash on her hand. OK that I gave her a week of topical steroids? I know how inhaled steroids interact with some meds […]

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