An ongoing dialogue on HIV/AIDS, infectious diseases,
March 5th, 2013
Exploring the Media Fascination with the Baby Cured of HIV
As undoubtedly you’ve heard by now, there’s another person cured of HIV out there — this time, it’s a baby born to an HIV-infected mother. Here’s the story: The mother didn’t know she was HIV positive until delivery, and the baby was found to be infected by both HIV DNA and RNA right at birth. […]
February 28th, 2013
Guest Post: CROI at 20 — A Look Back
The inimitable Carlos del Rio looks back at our premier scientific meeting, the annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), which starts this Sunday: CROI, which started as a small national conference held in a hotel in Washington DC, will hold its 20th meeting this year . When CROI first took place, we had just returned from Berlin, and HIV scientists […]
February 17th, 2013
An Adherence Intervention That Works — But There’s a Catch
In a previous post, we reviewed the various flavors of medication non-adherence, and concluded with this tantalizing line: Next up: An Adherence Intervention that Actually Works — But There’s a Catch Well here it is, just published online in JAMA Internal Medicine. Dr. Robert Gross (a long-time HIV adherence researcher from U Penn) and colleagues enrolled 180 patients […]
February 13th, 2013
Medication Adherence: The Final Frontier
Treatment of HIV has become so amazingly effective that when it fails, it’s no overstatement to say that it’s usually because the patient is not taking the medications. There are all kinds of provider-related reasons for this — inadequate patient education, prescribing and dispensing errors, failure to address language or education deficits — but here […]
January 17th, 2013
Why the Results of the C Diff Study (You Know Which One) Were No Surprise
In cased you missed it, fecal transplant — use of poop from a healthy donor, which is then infused into the colon either from above (nasogastric tube) or below (colonoscope) — is unquestionably the most effective treatment for people who have multiple recurrences of C. difficile colitis (C diff). We know this because of a randomized […]
January 1st, 2013
HIV Incidence: The Latest Numbers
The CDC has recently issued the latest report on HIV incidence (i.e., new infections) in the United States, and as always it’s fascinating to review the numbers. To start, the year-by-year estimated incidence: 2007: 53,200 2008: 47,500 2009: 45,000 2010: 47,500 (38,000 men, 9,500 women) Nope, not much change. Will data from HPTN 052 — published in the […]
December 5th, 2012
Top HIV Stories of 2012
Somewhere in our genome, we are programmed to use the end of the year as a time to reflect on the previous 12 months — and to make lists! If you don’t believe me, there’s barely a publication or web site out there that hasn’t already succumbed, and we’re just in early December. And what we can […]
November 7th, 2012
Vitamins and the Department of Bad Timing
Now that the election is over, we can get back to something that really matters — namely vitamins, and specifically whether they really help people. Last month there was a large, well-done study from Tanzania showing that mega-doses of vitamins not only didn’t help those HIV starting ART, but they actually were harmful — LFTs went […]
October 28th, 2012
Dolutegravir and the 88% Rule
In the latest treatment-naive trials of elvitegravir and dolutegravir, there’s a striking consistency in the results of the “test” regimen. Here are the studies, with the percentage of responders by treatment arm: Study 102: TDF/FTC/EFV (84%) vs. TDF/FTC/EVG/c (88%) — non-inferior Study 103: TDF/FTC + ATV/r (87%) vs. TDF/FTC/EVG/c (90%) — non-inferior SPRING-2: TDF/FTC or ABC/3TC […]
October 22nd, 2012
Can a “Treat Everyone with HIV” Policy Actually Work? In San Francisco, Yes
As has often been the case in the history of the HIV epidemic, the HIV/AIDS Division at San Francisco General Hospital and the San Francisco Department of Health were ahead of the curve in 2010 when they issued a recommendation that all people with HIV should receive treatment, regardless of CD4 count. Of course, US guidelines […]
Paul E. Sax, MD
Contributing Editor
NEJM Journal Watch
Infectious Diseases
Biography | Disclosures | Summaries
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