An ongoing dialogue on HIV/AIDS, infectious diseases,
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 […]
April 22nd, 2015
Seriously — How Much Would You Pay for a Curbside Consult?
Yes, seriously. Let me start with an email exchange I had with a PCP recently: Hi, Paul, quick question 😉 This lady, 49 YO woman from Haiti, asymptomatic, totally healthy. Got TSpot done for immigration purposes, it’s positive with negative chest Xray. Treated with INH 6 months in 2001. She travels to Haiti annually so could had been […]
April 8th, 2015
New HIV Treatment Guidelines, and the End of an Era
The new Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) HIV treatment guidelines are out, and thanks to skillful direction by Alice Pau, it’s as usual a must-read document — all 288 pages, of course! There are several major changes, so a good place to start is the all-important “What’s New in the Guidelines” summary page. Some of […]
April 3rd, 2015
Melting Snow ID Link-o-Rama
A few ID/HIV tidbits to contemplate as we go from slipping on ice and snow to dodging the mud: Beta-lactam therapy alone is non-inferior to regimens that also cover “atypicals” for hospitalized patients with pneumonia. These results challenge a dogma that has been present for a couple of decades — namely, that all patients admitted with community-acquired pneumonia should get […]
March 28th, 2015
Quick Question: Should HIV-Negative People in Serodiscordant Relationships All Get PrEP?
From a very thoughtful and experienced primary care provider came this query: Hey Paul, quick question — One of my patients, an HIV-negative gay man, is in a long-term relationship with one of your HIV-positive patients — my patient says his partner has been on successful HIV treatment for years. Obviously I can’t check his […]
March 21st, 2015
ID Learning Unit: Coagulase-Negative Staph, and the “Anti-Zebra” Residents’ Report
At the risk of betraying a deep streak of nerdiness, I confess to being a huge fan of Residents’ Report. This infatuation goes back to my medical student days, when the occasional chance to watch the Chief Medical Resident — who seemed the smartest doctor on the planet — lead a discussion of an interesting case inspired […]
March 8th, 2015
Measles Vaccine Videos and the Challenge of Changing Someone’s Mind
I suspect most of you have already been treated to this highly amusing video about the measles outbreak from Jimmy Kimmel — a comedy segment featuring real-life doctors, imagine that. Not your typical late-night comedy show performers, but they forcefully (and obscenely) get their message across. If you have just returned from a tropical island where the internet connection was iffy, […]
March 1st, 2015
Really Rapid Review — CROI 2015, Seattle
For the 3rd time in its illustrious history, the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) returned to Seattle this past week for it’s 22nd meeting. For those of us living in the North Pole, 50 degrees and drizzle never felt so wonderful! (See image below for graphic representation — that’s my dog Louie wondering what happened to his […]
Paul E. Sax, MD
Associate Editor
NEJM Clinician
Biography | Disclosures & Summaries
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FROM NEJM — Recent Infectious Disease Articles- Probable Japanese Encephalitis Virus Transmission through Organ Transplantation March 26, 2026Infection with Japanese encephalitis virus, a mosquito-borne flavivirus, was identified in a patient who received a liver transplant from a donor who resided in California.
- Brief Report: Prime Editing for p47phox-Deficient Chronic Granulomatous Disease March 26, 2026In this study, gene editing with a prime editor was used to treat two persons with chronic granulomatous disease caused by a small deletion in the gene NCF1.
- Communicating about Vaccines in a Politically Contentious Climate March 26, 2026Recent changes in U.S. vaccine policy are sowing confusion and threatening the health of children and the wider population. How should pediatric clinicians communicate with parents to stem the damage?
- Eczema Herpeticum March 26, 2026A 33-year-old pregnant woman with previously controlled atopic dermatitis presented with 3 days of fever and an itchy, painful rash. Erythematous vesiculopapular lesions were noted on the face, neck, chest, and arms.
- Genetic Medicine — Primed and Ready March 26, 2026Immunodeficiency chronic granulomatous disease (CGD) is a rare disorder characterized by defects in a multiprotein complex that generates superoxide in phagocytic cells.1 Recurrent infections and formation of granulomas are hallmarks of X-linked and autosomal-recessive CGD, which is caused by variants in genes encoding individual subunits. As a monogenic...
- Probable Japanese Encephalitis Virus Transmission through Organ Transplantation March 26, 2026