HIV and ID Observations

November 24th, 2020

Some ID Things to Be Grateful for This Holiday Season — 2020 (!) Edition

“Grateful?” some might wonder. “He must be out of his mind.” But even in the cursed year that began shortly after the first report of the disease now known as COVID-19 on (almost) New Year’s Eve, we can still find some things to praise, and to offer our gratitude. Or at the very least, acknowledge that […]

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October 18th, 2020

Does Remdesivir Actually Work?

Quick answer — it’s complicated. Let’s start with a clinical anecdote — rightfully considered the weakest form of evidence, yet paradoxically holding great power over us because we’re imperfect humans. It’s the way we’re wired. In April, a patient of mine with stable HIV came into the hospital with COVID-19 pneumonia. (Certain details changed for privacy.) She works […]

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August 30th, 2020

Cases of SARS-CoV-2 Reinfection Highlight the Limitations — and the Mysteries — of Our Immune System

In case you didn’t notice, or perhaps were “off the grid” taking some well-earned time away from COVID-19 news, this past week we heard about several cases of SARS-CoV-2 reinfection. We’ll come back to them in a moment, but first, some questions: Why does one parent never get sick when their kids start coughing and sneezing and […]

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August 24th, 2020

FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization for Convalescent Plasma for COVID-19 Seems To Be Fooling No One

Starting late Saturday night, and proceeding the next day — like a relentless series of coming attractions for a blockbuster summer movie or the finale of a reality TV series — we repeatedly heard word that the President planned to make an announcement Sunday evening about a “major therapeutic breakthrough” in treatment of COVID-19. 6 p.m. […]

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July 26th, 2020

Time to Amplify Our Voices Calling for Inexpensive Rapid Home Testing for COVID-19

Earlier this month, I highlighted how inexpensive rapid home testing for COVID-19 could get us out of this mess faster than a vaccine. To spare you re-reading the whole thing, here are the main points. Imagine a simple test done on a saliva sample placed on a paper strip. Results back in 15 minutes. Available without a […]

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July 15th, 2020

Really Rapid Review — AIDS 2020 Virtual

The International AIDS Conference — or AIDS 2020 — shifted from its Bay Area dual locations of San Francisco and Oakland to be entirely online. Digital. In the cloud. Virtual. The primary motivation for the switch was to show off what the numerous tech giants in the region could do with this fancy thing called the World […]

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May 25th, 2020

A Major Advance in Non-COVID-19 ID Research You Might Have Missed

One thing about the COVID-19 pandemic — other important non-COVID ID news gets crowded out. As a prime example, take HPTN 083, a major clinical trial in HIV prevention. The results are a big deal, and should have garnered more attention when they were released last week. This randomized, double-blind pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) study compared long-acting injectable […]

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April 12th, 2020

IDSA’s COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Highlight Difficulty of “Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There”

The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) gathered a series of experts for what were undoubtedly many late-night calls, reviews of published and pre-print literature, and revisions (of revisions), and admirably generated a set of treatment guidelines for COVID-19. The problem — there is no proven effective treatment for COVID-19. That is, there’s no proven treatment based […]

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March 6th, 2020

CROI 2020 Will Be a “Virtual Meeting” After All — Plus, What Scares Me (and Doesn’t) About Coronavirus

This just in: BREAKING NEWS: #CROI2020 will be a virtual meeting this year! Thanks to @IAS_USA @DonnaJacobsen and all CROI leadership for wrestling with this difficult decision and putting public health first. https://t.co/KPmJ66x7GL — Melanie Thompson (@drmt) March 6, 2020 If you’re a frequent reader of this blog, you might have read here just minutes ago that […]

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February 25th, 2020

First Week on Service, with One-a-Day ID Learning Units

There is almost always something to be learned from every new patient. It might be buried somewhere in the history, or the physical, or the lab tests, or the micro, or the imaging — but the odds are excellent that, with enough rumination, you’ll find it. I can’t remember now who taught me this important fact, or […]

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