An ongoing dialogue on HIV/AIDS, infectious diseases,
October 31st, 2021
Interesting and Important Studies from IAS 2021 and IDWeek That Caught My Eye
As noted in my previous post, attending virtual meetings poses some serious challenges. The biggest obstacle: trying to do one’s regular job while periodically checking in (or more likely not checking in) on the meeting. And while I might have been able to pull off some Really Rapid Reviews© after a few virtual meetings, not so […]
May 10th, 2021
Goodbye, Physician’s First Watch — We’re Really Going to Miss You
One of the great joys of life is working with great people, and for me, this includes frequent interactions with several skillful medical editors. They scan these posts for typos and awkward sentences, and warn me when I inadvertently include a copyrighted image or an inappropriate video. They also worked, until recently, for Physician’s First Watch, […]
March 14th, 2021
Really Rapid Review — CROI 2021 Virtual
For a few years in the early 2010s, the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) — in my opinion our premiere HIV scientific meeting — covered almost as many hepatitis C clinical trials as those on HIV. Or at least it seemed that way. This made sense at the time — the startling success of […]
February 15th, 2021
Time to Fix the HIV Testing Algorithm — and Here’s How to Do It
Remember the revised HIV testing algorithm that debuted in 2014? The one that was supposed to solve all our problems? First, it included a “highly sensitive” screening test that started with a “4th Generation” combination antibody/antigen test. This decreased the window period between acquiring HIV and having a positive test, thanks to the antigen. Great! (These “generation” […]
January 11th, 2021
After Ivermectin Controversy, A COVID-19-Free ID Link-o-Rama
Wow, quite the week for this country of ours. We’re all deeply saddened by the events, very hopeful that the transition in leadership will be peaceful. And also an eventful week for this little blog. When I wrote “Enter ivermectin — and let the controversy begin,” little did I know. Amazingly, this is already the second-most widely […]
November 24th, 2020
Some ID Things to Be Grateful for This Holiday Season — 2020 (!) Edition
“Grateful?” some might wonder. “He must be out of his mind.” But even in the cursed year that began shortly after the first report of the disease now known as COVID-19 on (almost) New Year’s Eve, we can still find some things to praise, and to offer our gratitude. Or at the very least, acknowledge that […]
July 15th, 2020
Really Rapid Review — AIDS 2020 Virtual
The International AIDS Conference — or AIDS 2020 — shifted from its Bay Area dual locations of San Francisco and Oakland to be entirely online. Digital. In the cloud. Virtual. The primary motivation for the switch was to show off what the numerous tech giants in the region could do with this fancy thing called the World […]
May 25th, 2020
A Major Advance in Non-COVID-19 ID Research You Might Have Missed
One thing about the COVID-19 pandemic — other important non-COVID ID news gets crowded out. As a prime example, take HPTN 083, a major clinical trial in HIV prevention. The results are a big deal, and should have garnered more attention when they were released last week. This randomized, double-blind pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) study compared long-acting injectable […]
March 16th, 2020
Difficult Times — Meaning No CROI Really Rapid Review 2020
In a usual year, right about now, I’d be obsessed with two things: What were the most practice-changing studies presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, or CROI? I’d want to summarize those for a patented, copyright-protected, check-with-my-lawyer-before-copying, Really Rapid Review©®. How will the upcoming baseball season play out? Most readers here don’t care, […]
March 6th, 2020
CROI 2020 Will Be a “Virtual Meeting” After All — Plus, What Scares Me (and Doesn’t) About Coronavirus
This just in: BREAKING NEWS: #CROI2020 will be a virtual meeting this year! Thanks to @IAS_USA @DonnaJacobsen and all CROI leadership for wrestling with this difficult decision and putting public health first. https://t.co/KPmJ66x7GL — Melanie Thompson (@drmt) March 6, 2020 If you’re a frequent reader of this blog, you might have read here just minutes ago that […]