HIV and ID Observations

December 3rd, 2017

Why, Even with Depressing Predictions About Flu Vaccine Effectiveness, We Should Still Recommend and Get It

Each year, the print and broadcast media round up a bunch of experts on influenza and ask them to predict the severity of the upcoming flu season. Most of the time their responses are noncommittal — predicting how bad the flu season will be year to year is tricky business, akin to picking stocks, making 12-month […]

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July 19th, 2017

Mystifying Cochrane Library Review on HCV Therapy Elicits Strong Response from IDSA

Last month, the Cochrane Review published a controversial paper on HCV therapy that left many ID doctors and hepatologists perplexed. After reviewing 138 randomized clinical trials using directly acting, non-interferon based therapies, they came to the following conclusions: The use of sustained virologic response (“SVR”) — or “cure”, if you want to use plain English — as a […]

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July 9th, 2017

Should You Answer Medical Questions from Clinicians You Don’t Know About Patients You’ve Never Seen?

This email popped into my inbox the other day from a person I’ve never met: Hi Dr. Sax, I do mostly hospital-based ID in Pennsylvania, and was consulted on a newly diagnosed HIV patient with CD4 10, viral load 210,000, and lymphoma. I started him on Truvada and dolutegravir, which is going well so far. Because he complained […]

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July 2nd, 2017

Delafloxacin, a New Quinolone, Is Approved for Skin Infections — But That’s Not Where It’s Really Needed

The history of the fluoroquinolone antibiotics can be divided into four eras, alternating good news and bad: Ciprofloxacin is approved — it covers everything, and is miraculous. We’re talking some tough customers here. Pseudomonas aeruginosa! Staphylococcus aureus! Neisseria gonorrhoeae! Plus, pretty much every gram negative causing urinary tract infections. There was no intravenous formulation initially, but that hardly mattered since it had […]

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June 10th, 2017

What’s Your Favorite Antibiotic? A Fantasy Draft

Over on the journal Open Forum Infectious Diseases (that’s “O-F-I-D”, not “Oh-FID”), the generous people from IDSA and Oxford University Press have allowed me to record a series of podcasts, interviewing various interesting people in the ID field. This time, however, I strayed from the usual format and asked my colleague Rebeca Plank to join me in a […]

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May 29th, 2017

Healthcare Providers Shouldn’t Come to Work While Sick, but They Do — Here’s Why

Let’s start with two questions: Have you ever seen a doctor, nurse, PA, pharmacist or other person directly involved in patient care wearing a surgical mask because they have a respiratory tract infection? Has this mask-wearing person ever been you? Bold prediction: Virtually every reader who works in a hospital or large office practice answered “Yes” to #1. Some […]

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April 30th, 2017

Celebrating the Invaluable Knowledge and Expertise of ID Specialist PharmD’s

Since expression of gratitude makes you happier — hey, I read it on the internet — and whining does the reverse, I’ve decided to turn what was going to be a typical rant about dealing with insurance companies into an expression of thanks to a remarkable group of professionals. Namely, the Doctors of Pharmacy (PharmD’s) who specialize in Infectious […]

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April 5th, 2017

Here’s What Happens When You Search “Infectious Diseases” on a Stock Photo Site

Everyone knows a stock image when they see one. The people don’t look real, the activities are staged, and everything has an air-brushed, frozen quality that screams, “This is not a real thing, but we need some copyright-free graphics and this is the best we can do.” Strangely depersonalized group photos, animals in human activities, and computer-created illustrations just […]

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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 19th, 2017

What Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price Should Be Saying About Required Immunizations

In case you missed it, Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price said this past week that the states should make decisions about mandatory vaccination policies. Here’s the actual clip: HHS Secretary Tom Price says it should be up to states to regulate whether immunizations are required https://t.co/soyH0YpO5E — CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) March 16, 2017 What’s notable here isn’t the […]

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