HIV and ID Observations

December 4th, 2008

More Support for HIV Screening

On Monday December 1 — World AIDS Day, if you’re keeping track — the American College of Physicians released a position paper supporting routine HIV screening for adolescents and adults in the United States.  (If you don’t want to read the whole thing, we’ll have a perfectly-executed summary by the inimitable Abbie Zuger on our AIDS Clinical […]

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November 30th, 2008

How to End the HIV Epidemic

Answer:  Put everyone on treatment. Conspicuously absent for decades, the prevention part of the “when to start antiviral therapy?” question has now moved front and center in two recent papers:  In this week’s Lancet, a group from the WHO estimated what would happen if there were annual universal HIV testing, and then immediate treatment for all […]

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October 1st, 2008

Deadlines of Note

Just a reminder of some interesting deadlines/events out there, in case you were too wrapped up sharpening pencils for tomorrow’s Vice Presidential debate: As of today, Medicare will no longer reimburse hospitals for medical errors — which includes some hospital-acquired infections.  According to this article, several other payors (including private insurers) are using this as a precedent […]

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September 5th, 2008

West Nile Virus and Friday Night Lights

The town of Braintree, just south of Boston, has cancelled Friday night high school football games until the first frost of the year due to concerns about West Nile.  Apparently the campus has a lake and wetlands,  good breeding grounds for mosquitoes.  “This is all in the name of safety,” says the school headmaster. (If someone […]

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August 8th, 2008

More from Mexico City

A bit more travelogue from the XVII International AIDS Conference: It’s impossible to see everything you want at such a large, sprawling conference, sometimes because of conflicting meetings, sometimes because the room is full, sometimes because of a feeling analagous to being in a giant museum for too many hours — fatigue just takes over.  But I’m […]

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July 25th, 2008

Word salad: Jalapenos, abacavir, doripenem, and PAVE

Some miscellaneous recent items from the ID/HIV world jumbling around this Friday: Tomatoes are off the hook — it’s the jalapenos that likely caused the recent salmonella outbreak.  Since this is the only time of year that tomatoes are even edible in this part of the world, I for one am quite relieved.  I am sure many […]

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July 6th, 2008

HIV Testing: The Bronx is Up …

So the New York City Public Health Department would like to have every adult living in the Bronx tested for HIV.  The  Times coverage of the effort cites the best reason for reason for such a move — the high death rates from the disease, and the cause: Public health officials attribute this [the deaths] to people […]

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June 24th, 2008

HIV Occupational Post-exposure Prophylaxis: Do the Right Thing

From one of our local HIV providers: There were two occasions recently when our local infectious disease doctor was consulted by the emergency room to decide what type of post exposure prophylaxis regimen to recommend for individuals who had sustained an occupational exposure (needlesticks) to two of our HIV positive patients.  It had been known […]

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June 15th, 2008

Curbside Consults: What are They Worth?

Below is a friendly email exchange I had last week with with one of our hospital’s primary care providers: Dear Paul, do you know anything about whether pts should be given prophylactic antibiotics prior to dental procedures etc. if they have an indwelling IV catheter?  I have a pt. who has a BardPort porta cath in […]

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June 2nd, 2008

Zoster Vaccine Guidelines — Official Answers, but Still Some Questions

The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices has just released the “official” guidelines for use of the zoster vaccine. And none too soon — if I had a dollar (or these days, make that a euro) for every curbside consult I’ve received about the zoster vaccine … The vaccine’s indications are simple — age over 60, […]

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