HIV and ID Observations

October 18th, 2008

Back to School, Day 2

During the course, often the best questions and anecdotes come during the breaks.  Here are a few: Tons of questions about our favorite nemesis, MRSA.  What works for chronic carriers?  How do you manage family members who you suspect would be culture-positive (and the source of recurrences), but are not your patient?  What if the vet […]

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October 8th, 2008

The French Win This One

The 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine goes to Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier for discovery of HIV.  They each get one-quarter of the prize money, with one-half going to Harald zur Hausen for showing the relationship between human papillomavirus and cervical cancer. For the record, if you search the Nobel press release for the word “Gallo”, […]

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October 1st, 2008

Deadlines of Note

Just a reminder of some interesting deadlines/events out there, in case you were too wrapped up sharpening pencils for tomorrow’s Vice Presidential debate: As of today, Medicare will no longer reimburse hospitals for medical errors — which includes some hospital-acquired infections.  According to this article, several other payors (including private insurers) are using this as a precedent […]

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August 22nd, 2008

We have met the enemy … and it is MRSA

In Jerry Groopman’s recent New Yorker piece on antibiotic-resistant bacteria, he quotes Dr. Louis Rice from the Cleveland VA, who uses the term “ESKAPE” bacteria:  an acronym for Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumanni, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Enterobacter. Nothing against the mostly gram-negative nasties in this list (and the focus of the New Yorker article), […]

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August 8th, 2008

More from Mexico City

A bit more travelogue from the XVII International AIDS Conference: It’s impossible to see everything you want at such a large, sprawling conference, sometimes because of conflicting meetings, sometimes because the room is full, sometimes because of a feeling analagous to being in a giant museum for too many hours — fatigue just takes over.  But I’m […]

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August 4th, 2008

Mexico City: Drive on the right … most of the time

Some early and completely non-scientific observations from the XVII AIDS Conference, taking place now in Mexico City: Everyone said getting to and from the Banamex Convention Center would be difficult, and of course they were right.  Mexico City is the largest city in the Western Hemisphere, has a road/traffic system that makes driving in Boston seem downright […]

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July 29th, 2008

Antiretroviral Rounds: Immediate ART After an OI — Are We There Yet?

A few things have been guaranteed to get widely divergent views among HIV specialists — and one of them was when to start antiretroviral therapy in someone presenting with an acute OI.  However, in the latest Antiretroviral Rounds, our two experts (Raphy Landovitz and Phil Grant/Andrew Zolopa) kind of agreed.  They’d start immediately.    At least that’s […]

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July 25th, 2008

Word salad: Jalapenos, abacavir, doripenem, and PAVE

Some miscellaneous recent items from the ID/HIV world jumbling around this Friday: Tomatoes are off the hook — it’s the jalapenos that likely caused the recent salmonella outbreak.  Since this is the only time of year that tomatoes are even edible in this part of the world, I for one am quite relieved.  I am sure many […]

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July 11th, 2008

M184V: So many options, but does that include TDF/FTC/EFV?

Co-formulated TDF/FTC/EFV (Atripla) is a nifty bit of pharmacologic packaging (ever so much more so since it involves collaboration between two different pharmaceutical companies, ahem) — and our patients have noticed.  All of us who practice HIV medicine have been asked for the “one pill” treatment; often these requests make sense, sometimes they don’t. It’s easy to say […]

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July 6th, 2008

HIV Testing: The Bronx is Up …

So the New York City Public Health Department would like to have every adult living in the Bronx tested for HIV.  The  Times coverage of the effort cites the best reason for reason for such a move — the high death rates from the disease, and the cause: Public health officials attribute this [the deaths] to people […]

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