An ongoing dialogue on HIV/AIDS, infectious diseases,
May 27th, 2015
START is STOPPED: Study Confirms HIV Treatment Is Beneficial for All, Even Those with High CD4 Cell Counts
The Strategic Timing of AntiRetroviral Treatment (START) study began in 2009, enrolling over 4000 asymptomatic people with HIV and CD4 cell counts > 500, and randomizing them to immediate ART or to wait until the count dropped to 350. Now, from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases comes this important announcement: Though the study was […]
May 21st, 2015
Which Infectious Diseases Do We Fear Too Much? Which Not Enough?
My friend (and HIV/ID colleague) Mauro Schechter sent me a funny email the other day — from Brazil, where he lives and works: I just read your post and watched the news clip about Powassan. And you still wonder why we think you Americans are paranoid disease freaks? 65 cases in 12 years in a population of […]
May 13th, 2015
WHO Guidelines on Naming Diseases Are Well-Meaning, Sensible — But Kind of Boring
From the World Health Organization (WHO), a recommendation on how to name a new disease: The best practices state that a disease name should consist of generic descriptive terms, based on the symptoms that the disease causes (e.g. respiratory disease, neurologic syndrome, watery diarrhoea) and more specific descriptive terms when robust information is available on […]
May 6th, 2015
An Apology to Subscribers, and Five Random ID/HIV Questions to Ponder
Some of you have been kind enough to enter your email address in the little box on the right side of this page, which gives you a “subscription” to this site. It looks like this: We thank you for signing up! Delivery is usually prompt and reliable (even during this past winter’s historic snowstorms), and the […]
May 4th, 2015
A Drug for Neck Fat, and Some Thoughts on Fat Accumulation Syndromes in HIV
It’s not often that a FDA drug approval for cosmetic dermatologists and plastic surgeons will get the attention of HIV/ID specialists, but this past week was an exception. From the FDA report: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved Kybella (deoxycholic acid), a treatment for adults with moderate-to-severe fat below the chin, known as […]
Paul E. Sax, MD
Associate Editor
NEJM Clinician
Biography | Disclosures & Summaries
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