HIV and ID Observations

March 14th, 2009

Maybe It’s Not the Cheeseburgers

… At least that’s the implied message in this nice paper from the latest Annals of Internal Medicine, which evaluated responses to lipid-lowering therapy among patients with and without HIV. The study included patients from the Kaiser Permanente of Northern California integrated health system, with 829 individuals with HIV and 6941 without. The quick summary […]

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March 10th, 2009

Unwelcome Visitor: Cost of HIV Meds

Those of us who practice HIV medicine in Taxachusetts (warning, click link at your peril) live a pretty charmed life, at least so far as getting HIV medications paid for.  Due to an incredibly generous AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP), rare is the patient who faces financial barriers getting his or her drugs. (By the […]

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March 4th, 2009

TaqMan HIV RNA Assay: Be Careful What You Wish For

At our hospital lab, we recently switched from the bDNA viral load assay to the new Roche TaqMan real-time PCR test.  The virologist in charge of our lab and the tech both agreed the assay was more accurate, more sensitive, and easier to do — so much so that we could increase the frequency of […]

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February 26th, 2009

Meningococcal Resistance to Ciprofloxacin

Ciprofloxacin-resistant Neisseria meningitidis has now been documented in the United States. Here’s a nice summary in Journal Watch, with two different perspectives. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised, but it did take a while.  (At least compared to that other famous neisseria-bug, Neisseria gonorrhoeae.) Oh well. Why is this important?  As every practicing ID doc/primary […]

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February 13th, 2009

CROI 2009: Greatest Hits

Fresh back from lovely Montreal, where the temperature (I’m glad to report) climbed into the balmy 40’s … Here’s a rapid-fire listing of the Greatest Hits.  As I’m sure to be leaving something off this list, happy to accept other suggestions: Interleukin-2 does not work.  The ESPRIT and SILCAAT studies are over. Yes, the CD4’s […]

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February 4th, 2009

Brush with Greatness: Bruce Walker

Bruce Walker has just received a $100 million grant from Terry and Susan Ragon to start a vaccine research institute, with a focus on finding an HIV vaccine. The news of this gift (which as you can imagine has been floating around these parts for some time) is all the more remarkable since it comes […]

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February 1st, 2009

Whither PEPFAR?

Mark Dybul will no longer be running the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, the multi-billion dollar international program for HIV treatment program started by Bush in 2003. Some are happy.  Others are not. (Note the exquisite use of euphemism — he was “required to submit his resignation“, not “fired.”) Experts on global […]

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January 29th, 2009

Too Many Options: What Actually Happened

We recently published a case in AIDS Clinical Care entitled “Too Many Options”, describing a patient with longstanding HIV infection, virologic failure, and resistance to NRTIs, NNRTIs, and PIs. Fortunately, resistance and tropism testing gave him several options for a new drug regimen — including darunavir, etravirine, maraviroc, enfuvirtide, and — if one believes phenotypic […]

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January 25th, 2009

Just Twenty Days Until Pitchers and Catchers Report …

As the temperature in Boston again falls below 10 degrees, my thoughts longingly turn to baseball — and how a  locally unpopular team is making a foray into the world of Infectious Diseases: The potential of a serious staph infection affecting a member of the team has not been lost on the New York Yankees. […]

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January 22nd, 2009

Fear of Vaccines: Not Just Parents

Fear of vaccines are legion among many parents, with enormous public health resources devoted to defusing this fear and trying to debunk common myths.  I find this site particularly useful. (Talk about a “hot button” topic.  Read this to get an idea about how passionate views on vaccine safety can be.  Wow.) This fear, however, […]

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