HIV and ID Observations

March 25th, 2017

HIV and Hepatitis C Are No Longer the Most Serious Infectious Threats to People Who Inject Drugs

I had dinner with my daughter Mimi the other evening, and was ruminating about how things have changed since I started work as an Infectious Diseases doctor around 25 years ago. Here’s an excerpt of our chat: Me:  There are way more cases of endocarditis in young people than there used to be, a complication of injecting drugs. People in their 20s and […]

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March 5th, 2017

High-Dose Flu Vaccine, Robert De Niro Challenge, Antibiotics for Colds, and More: March Comes in Like a Lion ID Link-o-Rama

Here are a few ID/HIV items blowing around the neighborhood on this, a bitterly cold and windy first weekend of March (at least here in Boston): Compared with the standard dose vaccine, the high-dose flu vaccine reduced deaths among older adults. The benefit was seen in the 2012-13 flu season, but not 2013-14. The authors speculate that the circulating […]

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February 19th, 2017

Really Rapid Review — CROI 2017, Seattle

The Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) returned to Seattle this past week for its 24th meeting. It’s the 4th time CROI has been held in Seattle, an excellent city for a meeting of this size, which includes “only” 4200 people. The convention center is pleasant and user-friendly — big but not cavernous, actually encourages […]

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February 13th, 2017

How to Make Preventing Heart Disease in HIV Fun and Exciting: The REPRIEVE Trial

The people researching cardiovascular disease in HIV have quite the challenge. Because when you think about it for a second, we HIV treaters are a pretty spoiled bunch when it comes to therapeutic success. We saw the transformation of a terrifying, incurable, and rapidly progressive disease (AIDS) into something that can be managed for decades — usually with just […]

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February 5th, 2017

Case Report of PrEP Failure: What Can We Learn From It?

The New England Journal of Medicine has published the first well-documented case of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) failure despite good medication adherence. We heard lots of this information at CROI last year, and again I’m impressed at the extraordinary degree of virologic investigation done on a case from clinical practice. To refresh your memory, here are the critical details from the […]

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July 14th, 2016

Must-Read Item: This Year’s JAMA HIV/AIDS Issue

The folks over at the Journal of the American Medical Association have been doing a periodic HIV/AIDS themed issue for years, generally around the time of the International AIDS Conference. The latest issue is out this week, and it’s terrific. Here are some highlights: In serodiscordant couples practicing “condomless sex”, there were zero transmissions if the infected partner […]

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May 22nd, 2016

Drug Prior Authorizations Are a Very Blunt Tool for Cost Containment — And They’re Annoying

Insurance prior authorizations, or prior approvals (PAs) — those dreaded forms clinicians have to fill out, usually triggered by prescribing a non-formulary drug — are much on my mind these days. And most of it has to do with three letters, specifically “TAF.” As readers of this site probably know, there are now three tenofovir alafenamide (TAF)-based coformulations […]

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May 16th, 2016

Lots of College Graduations ID Link-O-Rama

For those of us living and working in Boston, we are most definitely smack dab in the middle of college graduation season — which means traffic is crazy, restaurants are booked, and energetic young adults are everywhere wearing gowns and funny hats. In other words, a good excuse for an ID Link-o-Rama: FDA advises against use of fluoroquinolones for uncomplicated […]

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April 24th, 2016

Why Getting Old Isn’t Always So Terrible — and Why People with HIV Can Now Get Life Insurance

Two patient-related anecdotes, then a news item. Anecdote #1: A little email exchange I had with one of my patients recently: Hi Paul, Wondering if you got the refill request for my meds from my mail-order pharmacy — their customer service is lousy, and I can’t tell if it’s been approved. I’d like to get this settled before […]

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March 27th, 2016

One-Week-to-Baseball ID Link-o-Rama

(Important note:  Title has nothing to do with this post’s content. I just felt like writing something about baseball.) As some of us eagerly await the start of the 2016 baseball season — especially Cubs fans — here are some ID/HIV items yearning to shag flies, toss around the horsehide, and play some pepper: Famous anti-vaxxer — and notorious scientific fraud — […]

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