HIV and ID Observations

January 1st, 2010

Top 10 Stories of the Year

No end-of-year wrap-up is complete without a “Top 10” list, and Journal Watch: AIDS Clinical Care is no exception. This year we did two lists, one chosen by the Editors, the other a numeric tally of what’s read on line by the Readers. The “When to start” issue was the top story from the Editors. The big […]

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December 13th, 2009

Infection and the ICU: Outcome Predictable, but Important

If you enrolled over 14,000 ICU patients into a study on a single day, and then did follow-up, what would you find regarding the relationship of infection to the outcomes of ICU stay and mortality? Just such a study was published in JAMA last week, and here are the not-so-stunning conclusions: Infections are common in patients in […]

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December 8th, 2009

Vancouver, Phishing Phlu Scam, Telavancin, and Cartoon

A few things to ponder as the flu activity (mercifully) declines, at least for now: Interested in evidence that HIV treatment has become staggeringly effective?  Fully 87% of patients receiving treatment in the large British Columbia cohort have an HIV RNA < 50; not only that, the incidence of HIV drug resistance has declined more than […]

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October 20th, 2009

Well That Was Fast! HIV Vaccine Trial Published

Remember the HIV vaccine trial press release?  The one announcing the first-ever positive result? Then the backlash, with people questioning how the analyses were done, and reported? Now, less than a month later, we have the scientific presentation and the paper appear on the same day. Read all about it here and here. If you want the view […]

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October 17th, 2009

Is Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Another Retroviral Disease?

Here’s a surprising report in Science: Studying peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from CFS patients, we identified DNA from a human gammaretrovirus, xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV), in 68 of 101 patients (67%) compared to 8 of 218 (3.7%) healthy controls … These findings raise the possibility that XMRV may be a contributing factor […]

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October 12th, 2009

AIDS Vaccine: Maybe not Effective After All

Well, that didn’t take long: Researchers from the U.S. Army and Thailand announced last month they had found the first vaccine that provided some protection against HIV. But a second analysis of the $105 million study, not disclosed publicly, suggests the results may have been a fluke, according to AIDS scientists who have seen it. In short, […]

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