HIV and ID Observations

March 24th, 2019

Tetanus Case, No More MAC Prophylaxis, Playing in Dirt, and Low-Level Viremia — A National Puppy Day ID Link-O-Rama

In honor of spring (March 20), and the very important National Puppy Day (March 23), here are a bunch of ID and HIV-related recent items for consideration, contemplation, and perusal: A life-threatening case of tetanus in an unvaccinated boy highlights the personal and financial cost of the anti-vaccine movement. How deeply embedded are these false beliefs? The […]

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March 18th, 2019

Just 1 Month of TB Preventive Therapy Works for People with HIV in TB-Endemic Regions — How About Other People in Other Places?

There’s a look our patients frequently give us when we tell them that preventive therapy for tuberculosis involves 9 months of treatment. If I were to put that look into words, they would be: Yikes, Doc, 9 months is waaay too long — you must be out of your mind. It’s the “9 months?!?!” face. We’ve […]

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March 10th, 2019

Really Rapid Review — CROI 2019 Seattle

As a foot of wet snow bore down on Boston last week — see this post for why that matters — HIV researchers and policy makers headed to Seattle for this year’s Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, or CROI, which took place from March 4-7. And already I was feeling the pressure, based on this […]

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March 3rd, 2019

A Few Thoughts on the Day Before CROI — Our Best (and Quirkiest) Scientific Meeting

As I’ve written here numerous times, the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections — or “CROI” (rhymes with “toy”) — is the best of the scientific meetings on HIV. It starts March 4 in Seattle. Bringing together the perfect blend of clinical, translational, and epidemiologic research, CROI consistently boasts the highest density of worthwhile content in any […]

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January 27th, 2019

For Our Stable HIV Patients, Why Are We Still Sending All These Lab Tests So Often?

Interesting query from a colleague recently: I’m a community ID doc in the trenches (the measles trenches at present) with an HIV question. Why do we still check CBCs & chem panels every 3-6 months in our HIV patients? Particularly our well-controlled, virologically-suppressed patients? This strikes me as a tremendous waste. I haven’t been in practice that long, […]

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January 6th, 2019

Rabies After Trip to India, Aortic Dissections with Quinolones, a Vaccine for Candida, Koala Bites, and More: A Welcome-to-2019 ID Link-o-Rama

As 2018 tips over into 2019, here are a bunch of ID- and HIV-related studies that, for one reason or another, haven’t made their way to this site yet — but still yearn for your attention: Cases of infective endocarditis have increased since release of the 2007 dental prophylaxis guidelines. Recall that those guidelines only recommended prophylaxis […]

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December 12th, 2018

Two Weeks of Attending on the ID Consult Service, with One-A-Day ID Learning Units

For those of us who don’t do inpatient medicine all the time, the “blocks” doing inpatient Infectious Diseases consults are a stark reminder of just how complex and challenging the case material can be. Think about it — if a hospitalized patient has a straightforward ID problem, we are not getting involved. No one consults ID […]

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December 2nd, 2018

As A Strategy for HIV Prevention, Disabling the CCR5 Gene in Embryos Implanted in HIV-Negative Mothers Makes Zero Sense

One of the great joys of being an ID/HIV specialist is looking back at how far we’ve come in HIV prevention and treatment since the beginning of the epidemic. Here are a bunch of things we know about HIV prevention, listed roughly in order of when we learned them — and forgive me if this is an oversimplification […]

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November 25th, 2018

Does Experiencing Childhood Illness Make Someone Stronger? How One Person Turned Adversity into Remarkable Success

Many people growing up with chronic illness become resilient. Whether it’s Crohn’s Disease, or cystic fibrosis, or diabetes, or the sequelae of an accident, or whatever condition they have, they impressively live their life just like the rest of us — occasionally regressing or slowing down only during a flare of the illness. But then there’s an […]

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November 18th, 2018

HIV and HCV Treatment, Shorter Antibiotic Courses, Malaria-Sniffing Dogs, and Other ID and HIV Reasons to Be Grateful, 2018 Edition

As noted here before, I’m a big fan of Thanksgiving, a great excuse to get together with family and friends, and to eat a gargantuan amount of food.* (*On this last point, non-U.S. citizens will wonder how this differs from any other time we “Americans” get together. Indeed, we are the Land of Giant Portions. Ever eat […]

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