HIV and ID Observations

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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March 26th, 2020

No Opening Day … Yet

My memories of spring have always included baseball. I worshiped my older brother Ben — he’s still pretty great — and he loved baseball. So as the days in March shifted from cold and dark to slightly less cold and much less dark, the game he played so brilliantly with his friends pulled me in. I […]

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March 16th, 2020

Difficult Times — Meaning No CROI Really Rapid Review 2020

In a usual year, right about now, I’d be obsessed with two things: What were the most practice-changing studies presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, or CROI? I’d want to summarize those for a patented, copyright-protected, check-with-my-lawyer-before-copying, Really Rapid Review©®. How will the upcoming baseball season play out? Most readers here don’t care, […]

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October 14th, 2019

Common Questions About the Shingles Vaccine — Answered Here!

Here’s an interesting email from my friend and ID-colleague Dr. Carlos Del Rio (shared with his permission): Went Tuesday to see my PCP for a routine visit and had my second dose of Shingrix that day. I had gotten my first dose about 3 months ago and had severe chills and even a fever of 38.5 […]

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August 11th, 2019

The United States Needs Stricter Gun Control Now — and Yes, This Is an ID Issue

In general, I’ve tried to keep this site a pretty happy place. It’s not been difficult. The ID and HIV community includes many smart, like-minded individuals involved in all sorts of interesting and challenging work, both domestically and abroad. As one of our ID fellows recalled, after he did a rotation in our ID clinic during […]

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July 14th, 2019

The House of God Profiled Physician Burnout Long Before We Called It That — Should Aspiring Doctors Still Read It?

Many consider the novel The House of God, written by Samuel Shem (pen name for Stephen Bergman), to be a must-read for any physician or soon-to-be physician. A fictionalized account of his internship year, the book details how the accumulated stress, fatigue, and powerlessness of being a first-year doctor inexorably accumulates during that year — […]

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May 12th, 2019

On Mother’s Day, a Tribute to a Mother Who Doesn’t Celebrate Mother’s Day

My siblings and I are pretty lucky, because our mother may be the smartest person in the world. Let me reassure you that this is not just our biased opinion. Everyone who knows her well thinks the same thing — including my wife, who told me today, on Mother’s Day, that my Mom’s remarkable brainpower should […]

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August 23rd, 2018

Eye Worm, MALDI-TOF, New Lyme Testing Approach, Dogs Fail as C. diff Testers, Uiyk (?), and More — A Summer Is Getting Shorter ID Link-o-Rama

A recent chilly spell here in Boston recalled a universal truth about aging — that summer seems to get shorter every year. As far as I can tell in my unscientific poll of everyone who will engage with me on this topic, there are no exceptions to this rule. Everyone thinks summer is shorter than when […]

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August 12th, 2018

Apologies, Our E-Mail Notifications Are Not Reliably Going Out

Last week, I wrote something I really wanted my long-time friend and colleague, Susan Larrabee, to read. Susan is the HIV social worker-extraordinaire I’ve been working with for a million years, give or take a few. The piece covered how rewarding it is to care for people with HIV. If anyone could affirm that view, it’s Susan. […]

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May 6th, 2018

Looking Back on a Decade of Blogging About HIV and Infectious Diseases

Last week, Dr. Wendy Armstrong from Emory kindly invited me to spend some time with their smart, energetic ID fellows. (See if you can pick me out of the group in the photo at right — hint, I’m the old guy on the left.) Before the trip, Wendy asked them whether they’d rather hear me give a […]

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