An ongoing dialogue on HIV/AIDS, infectious diseases,
December 6th, 2014
Holiday Season 2014 ID/HIV Link-O-Rama
A little spin around the internet brings us these ID/HIV tidbits, all of them designed to go well with holiday music, egg nog, and potato pancakes, plus a can’t-miss video clip: Flu vaccine match with circulating virus doesn’t look so great. This could mean it’s going to be a tough flu season, but estimates of flu […]
October 30th, 2014
Why the IPERGAY (Yes, That’s Its Name) Study Could Substantially Increase Use of PrEP
Yesterday, the French IPERGAY study of intermittent pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) was stopped early by the Data Safety Monitoring Board, and for the best reason — the evidence demonstrating that it prevented HIV was overwhelming. For those who read French, here’s the official announcement. (Scroll down for the English.) And for those who can’t believe the name, it stands […]
May 15th, 2014
CDC Recommends Broader Use of Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis — Can We Make It Happen?
Making a much stronger and more comprehensive statement than their earlier “Guidance,” the CDC is now recommending tenofovir/FTC (Truvada) for all Americans at high risk for HIV. More specifically, they recommend it for a broad range of people who have certain risk factors (click to see full size image): One certainly gets why this was done — as summarized nicely in […]
June 13th, 2013
PrEP Works in Injection Drug Users, CDC Offers “Guidance”
From The Lancet comes this important study of tenofovir pre-exposure prophylaxis for injection drug users (IDUs): In this randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, we enrolled volunteers from 17 drug-treatment clinics in Bangkok, Thailand … We randomly assigned [2413] participants to either tenofovir or placebo … 50 became infected during follow-up: 17 in the tenofovir group and 33 […]
August 9th, 2012
New PrEP “Guidance” Released by CDC
The CDC issued its second “Interim Guidance” on the use of tenofovir/FTC as pre-exposure prophylaxis for prevention of HIV, this time for prevention of HIV in heterosexually active adults. The rationale? Since January 2011, data from studies of PrEP among heterosexual men and women have become available, and on July 16, 2012, the Food and Drug […]
July 16th, 2012
Sizzling Summer Serratias
Several ID/HIV items to contemplate as the heat really kicks in here in the torrid USA: TDF/FTC approved for pre-exposure prophylaxis. The challenging issues of defining the best candidates for this strategy — and finding the providers to prescribe it — still remain, but FDA approval should at least help justify insurance coverage if clinicians choose […]
May 10th, 2012
Advisory Meeting Today on Tenofovir/FTC for PrEP, and a Proposed “Niche” for its Use
From Bloomberg News: Gilead Sciences Inc.’s pill Truvada was safe and effective when used to protect uninfected people from getting HIV, U.S. regulators said in a report indicating the main concerns are when and how it should be used … The FDA asked its advisers to suggest who should get Truvada; what testing would be needed […]
March 15th, 2012
CROI 2012 Really Rapid Review — with CROI 2013 Dates!
Some highly subjective highlights — a Really Rapid Review™– from this year’s Number One Greatest Super Scientific HIV Conference, the 19th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), which ended last week in Seattle: Need more evidence that maintaining a CD4 cell count > 500 is beneficial? This compelling analysis from the SMART and ESPRIT studies found that […]
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 […]
April 25th, 2011
FEM-PrEP: A Set Back in HIV Prevention Research
HIV prevention has been on such a roll recently that the recent negative news from the FEM-PrEP study came as something of a surprise. Bottom line: Following a scheduled interim review of the FEM-PrEP study data, the Independent Data Monitoring Committee (IDMC) advised that the FEM-PrEP study will be highly unlikely to be able to demonstrate […]
Paul E. Sax, MD
Contributing Editor
NEJM Journal Watch
Infectious Diseases
Biography | Disclosures | Summaries
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