HIV and ID Observations

October 1st, 2010

Five Friday Fasciolas

As we await either the start of the baseball playoffs (or Spring Training), here is some ID/HIV content to consider, in no particular order: Could adenovirus infection be the cause of obesity?  That would be the media take, especially from this highly-esteemed research journal, The New York Daily News. (Warning:  kind of ugly photo in […]

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September 17th, 2010

What Are These Conferences?

With ICAAC now completed — which took place in a city called Boston but seemed far, far, from home (see picture) — it seems timely to inquire about another form of “scientific” conference. Every so often, I’ll receive an email like this (slightly edited to protect the sender, whomever he or she may be): Dear […]

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September 6th, 2010

Treating Cellulitis: Getting the Answer Wrong and Right

What’s the right antibiotic choice for cellulitis in the era of community-acquired MRSA? As astutely pointed out by Anne in her comment, the “correct” answer to the recertification question was #4, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, for the following reason: I am not a doctor, I am a test developer. Having exactly zero knowledge about the content here (could […]

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September 1st, 2010

Testing your Testing Skills

Have I whined yet about how I’m part of the first Internal Medicine class that was not “grandfathered” through to eternal board certfication?  If not, now I have. So for you fellow test-takers, here’s another one for you, adapted somewhat from this delightful experience I’m required to go through every 10 years.  Oddly, just like the […]

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August 30th, 2010

Required Reading: In Love and “Serodiscordant”

Being of a certain age, my wife and I still subscribe to the print version of the Sunday New York Times.  Since we also get the local rag, quite a bit of paper is deposited on our doorstep each week. Worth it?  You bet, especially since occasionally there’s a gem in there like this week’s […]

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August 26th, 2010

Lyme Cases Up — Anecdotes, True Epidemiology, and More Anecdotes

All of us New England-based ID doctors (and internists and family practitioners and pediatricians and NPs/PAs in primary care) who have been in practice a while will tell you that Lyme cases have been increasing for years. And it’s not just the number of cases, it’s also where and when they are occurring.  A few years […]

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August 10th, 2010

Curbside Consults: The Yin and the Yang

One of the simultaneously most enjoyable and exasperating aspects of being an Infectious Disease specialist is the large volume of “curbside” consultations we get from colleagues. For example, here’s this week’s talley — and it’s only Tuesday — done from memory and without systematically keeping track of emails, pages, phone calls, etc.: Duration of antibiotics […]

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July 19th, 2010

Vienna IAS: First (Really) Positive Microbicide Study

Big news from Vienna and Science, imminently: The CAPRISA 004 trial assessed effectiveness and safety of a 1% vaginal gel formulation of tenofovir, a nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitor, for the prevention of HIV acquisition in women. A double-blind, randomized controlled trial was conducted comparing tenofovir gel (n = 445) with placebo gel (n = 444) in sexually active, HIV-uninfected 18- to 40-year-old […]

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July 6th, 2010

Torrid Tuesday

Some ID/HIV-related items for a sweltering summer day: Are the AIDS Drug Assistance Programs (ADAPs) in trouble?  Certainly in some states they are, and this interview gives additional perspective.  But I wonder — how much of this is HIV-specific, and how much is just the ongoing lousy economy.  In other words, are other government-funded programs comparably stressed?  […]

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July 1st, 2010

RFA-AI-10-009, HIV Cure, and “Berlin Patient” Update

Interesting “RFA” (Request for Application, #RFA-AI-10-009) from Bethesda: The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), National Institutes of Health (NIH), encourage grant applications from institutions/organizations to address the problem of HIV-1 persistence in HIV-1-infected persons treated with suppressive antiretroviral drug regimens… The goal of this […]

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