An ongoing dialogue on HIV/AIDS, infectious diseases,
October 23rd, 2011
TB, Timing of Antiretroviral Therapy, and Being a Lumper Rather Than a Splitter
Three key papers on timing of ART in patients with TB have just been published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Fortunately, Carlos Del Rio has done a bang-up job summarizing them in Journal Watch AIDS Clinical Care.
And if you’re wondering how we got our title for Carlos’ piece, here’s an e-mail between our Executive Editor to me a few weeks ago:
Hi Paul-
Later this month, NEJM will be publishing three articles on the timing of ART initiation relative to TB treatment. I assume we should cover these?
Cath
To which I responded:
Yep. And they all can be summarized as follows: “TB + low CD4 = start ART sooner rather than later”.
Yes, there are lots more data from these studies than this simple equation, but my response was a reminder that, despite being a thrice-certified ID specialist, I tend to be more of a lumper rather than a splitter — which makes me feel somewhat deficient in our field.
Oh well.
Of course even the less detail-obsessed ID docs like me probably score pretty high on the OCD-meter, so I can take some comfort in that.
Categories: HIV, Infectious Diseases, Patient Care, Research
Tags: antiretroviral therapy, ART, HIV, New England Journal of Medicine, TB, tuberculosis
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Comments are closed.

Paul E. Sax, MD
Contributing Editor
NEJM Journal Watch
Infectious Diseases
Biography | Disclosures | Summaries
Learn more about HIV and ID Observations.
Follow HIV and ID Observations Posts via Email
- Endless Recertification in Medicine — Some Thoughts About the Tests We Take
- Long-Acting Cabotegravir-Rilpivirine for People Not Taking Oral Therapy — Time to Modify Treatment Guidelines?
- My Vote for the Weirdest Antibiotic on the Planet
- Learning the Names of HIV Drugs Is Horribly Difficult — Here’s Why
- Really Rapid Review — Brisbane IAS 2023
- ID Cartoon Caption Contest (125)
- ID Cartoon Caption Contest #2 Winner — and a New Contest for the Holidays (92)
- Dear Nation — A Series of Apologies on COVID-19 (80)
- How to Induce Rage in a Doctor (77)
- IDSA’s COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Highlight Difficulty of “Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There” (74)
-
NEJM Journal Watch — Recent Infectious Disease Articles
- Missed Chances for Screening in Persons Newly Diagnosed with HIV: New York City, 2018–2022
- Arboviral Disease Surveillance in the U.S.
- Observations from ID and Beyond: Long-Acting Cabotegravir-Rilpivirine for People Not Taking Oral Therapy — Time to Change Treatment Guidelines?
- Risk for C. difficile Infection Varies Widely with Choice of Antibiotic
- Mpox in Persons with Previous Infection or Vaccination
-
Tag Cloud
- Abacavir AIDS antibiotics antiretroviral therapy ART atazanavir baseball Brush with Greatness CDC C diff COVID-19 CROI darunavir dolutegravir elvitegravir etravirine FDA HCV hepatitis C HIV HIV cure HIV testing ID fellowship ID Learning Unit Infectious Diseases influenza Link-o-Rama lyme disease MRSA PEP Policy PrEP prevention primary care raltegravir Really Rapid Review resistance Retrovirus Conference rilpivirine sofosbuvir TDF/FTC tenofovir Thanksgiving vaccines zoster