HIV and ID Observations

August 26th, 2013

When Eating Guinea Pig, Make Sure to Ask for it Well Done

I’ve written before about how ID doctors are no fun to have at cook outs, what with our obsession with well-done hamburgers. Now, there’s another menu item we can berate grill-meisters on, and that’s guinea pig meat: At least 81 people fell ill from suspected salmonella poisoning after eating guinea pig meat and other foods […]

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August 25th, 2013

Death from “Brain-Eating Parasite”: A Reminder of How Little We Really Know

  Sometimes it takes a lot to surprise an ID doctor — we who try to make it seem like we’ve seen it all — but certain infections are either so severe (e.g., necrotizing fasciitis from group A strep) or so rare (e.g., endocarditis from Erysipelothrix rhusiopathiae) that even we are startled. Doubly startling are those […]

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August 20th, 2013

Underreporting of Lyme Disease No Surprise, but a Big Problem

In a welcome update, CDC just presented revised data on the number of Lyme Disease cases annually in the United States. Here are the key facts: Cases reported by clinicians: 30,000 Estimated number of cases using additional information from insurance claims, laboratories, and patient reports: 300,000 Go ahead, check my math — that’s a whopping […]

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August 6th, 2013

Nelson Cruz and Yet Another ID-Baseball Link

Texas slugger Nelson Cruz is one of the Biogenesis gang just suspended from baseball for use of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs). For those who care about these things, he’s also probably the most important player from the banned list, since he’s 1) very good and 2) on a team in contention for a playoff spot. For […]

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August 1st, 2013

Poll: Will There Be A Shortage of HIV Providers?

Over on NEJM Journal Watch — love that new name — I reviewed a paper on the demographics of people living with AIDS in San Francisco. Bottom line — more than half are now older than 50. Implication — that’s so old! First, it really isn’t, unless you compare it to the dismal era 20+ […]

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July 23rd, 2013

Guess it Wasn’t the Acyclovir After All

Big news in baseball land is that superstar Ryan Braun has been suspended for the rest of the season for using performance enhancing drugs (PEDs). And why is this information in an Infectious Diseases blog? Three main reasons: When Braun first got nabbed for PEDs in 2011, it was widely rumored it had something to […]

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July 20th, 2013

There’s No US News & World Report Infectious Diseases Ranking — Is That A Good Thing?

As the internet burns through traditional print media, decimating anything paper in its path, several odd things have happened beyond simply putting those newspapers, magazines, and journals out of business. For example, Gourmet was subsumed into Bon Appetit — who could have predicted that? PLoS One and its ilk were born. And what about the […]

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July 3rd, 2013

First Year ID Fellows — What Do They Learn, and What Do They Hate?

In the weird calendar of academic medical centers, July 1 is the “official” first day of school. In our ID program, however, we shifted it to July 5 a few years ago to avoid the interruption of the July 4 holiday at the beginning of the year. On July 3 — today — our incoming […]

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June 27th, 2013

Testing Out the New Website with an ID Link-o-Rama

Hey, new website is live! Interested to hear what you think about our new-ish look. In celebration, here are some quick ID/HIV tidbits that have recently crossed my path, or have been sitting in my inbox for a while, dying to get out: Doxycycline shortage. Hardly anything more frightening to a New England ID doc than […]

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June 19th, 2013

FDA, IND, FMT: Nine Letters, Some Common Sense, and a Real Video Link

Good news here — the FDA has reconsidered their requirement for an IND for fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) for C diff: Some health care providers have stated that applying IND requirements will make FMT unavailable and have suggested that an alternative regulatory approach is needed to ensure the widespread availability of FMT for individuals with […]

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