HIV and ID Observations

September 4th, 2011

“Novel” Approaches to Initial HIV Therapy: Part II

Two studies were just published on alternative strategies for initial HIV therapy. I’ve already reviewed the first one here. The second paper is a single-arm (n=112) study of darunavir/r (once daily) plus raltegravir, the latest riff on the “NRTI sparing” approach. As I mentioned when I first covered this study, the high rate of virologic failure — […]

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September 3rd, 2011

“Novel” Approaches to Initial HIV Therapy: Part I

It’s been several years since the “preferred” or “recommended” initial regimens for HIV treatment have been consolidated into one of the following four: TDF/FTC + efavirenz TDF/FTC + atazanavir/r TDF/FTC + darunavir/r TDF/FTC + raltegravir Any room for improvement in this “TDF/FTC + key third drug” approach? With the recent approval of TDF/FTC/rilpivirine, certainly this will […]

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July 28th, 2011

Really Rapid Review — IAS 2011 Rome

Just back from IAS 2011 (which was followed, I’m thrilled to say, with a visit to perhaps the most beautiful region in the world). Here is a Really Rapid Review™ of the meeting, with apologies ahead of time for lack of organization and (even more likely) leaving out something important.  FYI, the abstracts are online […]

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July 20th, 2011

CROI 2012 Dates Now Official: March 5-8, Seattle

Good news for coffee lovers!

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July 13th, 2011

More Favorable Results on PrEP, But …

As part of the usual flurry of studies released just before major scientific meetings, results of two pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) trials in heterosexual men and women have just been made public: In the CDC TDF2 study, 1200 HIV-uninfected men and women in Botswana were randomized to take oral tenofovir/FTC or placebo daily. Tenofovir/FTC was found to reduce the […]

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July 5th, 2011

Unofficial CROI 2012 Dates: March 4-10, in Seattle

No, there’s nothing up yet (as of July 5, 2011) on the official CROI web site. But someone was kind enough to send me this link that lists upcoming meetings in Seattle.  Here’s an extract: Note that only those events with green shading are “Definite.” And since these dates haven’t yet been confirmed by the CROI-meisters, it’s […]

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July 3rd, 2011

Proof That We Are Not French

In case you were worrying about fading American national identity as we celebrate July 4, did you see this detail on a recent E. coli O104:H4 outbreak from France? More recently, at least 15 people in Bordeaux, in southwestern France, appear to have been infected with the strain found in Germany. Most of them have been […]

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June 19th, 2011

Abacavir Agonistes

The studies on abacavir and its potential association with increased cardiovascular risk have been inconsistent ever since the news first broke at CROI 2008. But recently the data have been swirling around so fast and furious that it seems appropriate to take out this famous Greek epithet. A summary of some recent notable studies: An FDA meta-analysis […]

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June 15th, 2011

Hockey Helicobacters

Today’s ID/HIV items come to you courtesy of a winter game being played during a summer month: So it appears that community-based care of HCV augmented by telemedicine is just as good as traditional clinic visits to specialists. My first thought on reading this important paper is that there are undoubtedly lots of ways to incorporate […]

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June 2nd, 2011

Original XMRV/CFS Paper Almost, Sort-of Retracted by Science

From the pages of Science In this week’s edition of Science Express, we are publishing two Reports that strongly support the growing view that the association between XMRV and CFS described by Lombardi et al. likely reflects contamination of laboratories and research reagents with the virus … Because the validity of the study by Lombardi et al. is […]

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