HIV and ID Observations

August 8th, 2022

Long-Acting Injectable HIV Therapy for People Who Won’t Take ART?

HIV treatment is so spectacularly effective that you might be surprised to hear that some people with HIV still have uncontrolled viral replication. We HIV clinicians watch with frustration and sadness as they experience progressive immunodeficiency, complications from advanced HIV disease, hospitalizations, and HIV-related deaths. Plus, while viremic, they continue to risk transmitting the virus […]

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February 18th, 2022

A Return of Antiretroviral Rounds — What Regimen Would You Choose?

Years ago, back in the pre- and early internet days, one of the most popular features in the newsletter Journal Watch AIDS Clinical Care was something called Antiretroviral Rounds. We’d present a case, then have two expert discussants weigh in on what they would do. The link above is a case from ancient history — 1998! […]

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November 23rd, 2021

Gratitude for 40 Years of Progress in HIV Care and Research

I was working with one of our outstanding senior ID fellows in clinic last week, and she presented the case she’d just seen, a 54-year-old man with HIV (certain details changed for confidentiality): Will is doing great on [fill in one-pill daily regimen], missing no doses. He’s having some difficulty with sleep (his wife says he […]

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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 […]

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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, […]

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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 […]

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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” […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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