December 8th, 2009

Vancouver, Phishing Phlu Scam, Telavancin, and Cartoon

TelevancinA 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 12-fold since 1997.  Wow.  I wouldn’t want to be in the business of selling resistance tests.
  • Did you read about this scam?  The text from the hoax is pretty awkward — “This profile has to be created both for the vaccinated people and the non-vaccinated ones” is a choice bit of prose — but one could easily imagine how it could trap at least somebody.  And as an example of the levels to which humans will stoop to make money, using fear of a real virus to spread a computer one has to be way down there.
  • Has anyone yet actually used telavancin?  Not in a clinical trial, but in a patient in clinical practice?  If so, what were the indications?  How did it go?
  • Related, here is a great cartoon — but there’s an even better one on antibiotics that has not yet appeared on-line at The Cartoon Bank, so stay tuned.

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HIV Information: Author Paul Sax, M.D.

Paul E. Sax, MD

Contributing Editor

NEJM Journal Watch
Infectious Diseases

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