An ongoing dialogue on HIV/AIDS, infectious diseases,
August 30th, 2010
Required Reading: In Love and “Serodiscordant”
Being of a certain age, my wife and I still subscribe to the print version of the Sunday New York Times. Since we also get the local rag, quite a bit of paper is deposited on our doorstep each week. Worth it? You bet, especially since occasionally there’s a gem in there like this week’s […]
August 26th, 2010
Lyme Cases Up — Anecdotes, True Epidemiology, and More Anecdotes
All of us New England-based ID doctors (and internists and family practitioners and pediatricians and NPs/PAs in primary care) who have been in practice a while will tell you that Lyme cases have been increasing for years. And it’s not just the number of cases, it’s also where and when they are occurring. A few years […]
August 10th, 2010
Curbside Consults: The Yin and the Yang
One of the simultaneously most enjoyable and exasperating aspects of being an Infectious Disease specialist is the large volume of “curbside” consultations we get from colleagues. For example, here’s this week’s talley — and it’s only Tuesday — done from memory and without systematically keeping track of emails, pages, phone calls, etc.: Duration of antibiotics […]
July 19th, 2010
Vienna IAS: First (Really) Positive Microbicide Study
Big news from Vienna and Science, imminently: The CAPRISA 004 trial assessed effectiveness and safety of a 1% vaginal gel formulation of tenofovir, a nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitor, for the prevention of HIV acquisition in women. A double-blind, randomized controlled trial was conducted comparing tenofovir gel (n = 445) with placebo gel (n = 444) in sexually active, HIV-uninfected 18- to 40-year-old […]
July 6th, 2010
Torrid Tuesday
Some ID/HIV-related items for a sweltering summer day: Are the AIDS Drug Assistance Programs (ADAPs) in trouble? Certainly in some states they are, and this interview gives additional perspective. But I wonder — how much of this is HIV-specific, and how much is just the ongoing lousy economy. In other words, are other government-funded programs comparably stressed? […]
July 1st, 2010
RFA-AI-10-009, HIV Cure, and “Berlin Patient” Update
Interesting “RFA” (Request for Application, #RFA-AI-10-009) from Bethesda: The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), National Institutes of Health (NIH), encourage grant applications from institutions/organizations to address the problem of HIV-1 persistence in HIV-1-infected persons treated with suppressive antiretroviral drug regimens… The goal of this […]
June 16th, 2010
Another HIV Drug Development Program Bows Out
Last month, Avexa announced that they will not be going forward with their development of the investigational NRTI apricitabine. Now Myriad says its program to develop bevirimat is closing as well. The problems with these drugs — twice daily dosing with apricitabine, formulation and mixed responses with bevirimat — are not the real story here, since […]
June 11th, 2010
Plays at the (Culture) Plate
Some quick ID/HIV/other thoughts while we marvel in all that is Strasburgian: Did you know that HIV medication adherence improves over time? So much for “pill fatigue.” By the way, this anecdotally fits with my experience as well. And right now, the biggest reason for patients’ stopping their HIV meds is financial, usually due to loss of or […]
June 2nd, 2010
Screening for Anal Cancer and the World’s Worst Job
In Journal Watch AIDS Clinical Care, we published a simple case: Clinically stable HIV+ gay man, on HIV treatment; anal pap comes back with “atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance” (ASCUS). What to do with this result? Two experts weighed in, Howard Libman and Joel Gallant. In Howard’s thoughtful response, he acknowledges the limitations of the data […]
May 27th, 2010
HIV Treatment is Prevention!
The Lancet has just published a large prospective study demonstrating the protective effect of HIV treatment on the risk of viral transmission: 3381 couples were eligible for analysis … Only one of 103 genetically-linked HIV-1 transmissions was from an infected participant who had started ART, corresponding to transmission rates of 0·37 (95% CI 0·09—2·04) per 100 […]
Paul E. Sax, MD
Associate Editor
NEJM Clinician
Biography | Disclosures & Summaries
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FROM NEJM — Recent Infectious Disease Articles- Interactive Perspective: Measles December 18, 2025This Double Take video reviews evidence-based recommendations on measles prevention and management and explores commonly asked questions about the measles virus and infection.
- Noninferiority of One HPV Vaccine Dose to Two Doses December 18, 2025In this trial, one dose of an HPV vaccine was noninferior to two doses in preventing HPV type 16 or 18 infection.
- From Crisis to Action — Policy Pathways to Reverse the Rise in Congenital Syphilis December 18, 2025In recent years, cases of congenital syphilis have surged. This trend reflects both prenatal care gaps and systemic issues, including failures in testing, treatment, and public health infrastructure.
- Contact Precautions for MRSA and Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococcus December 18, 2025This feature about the use of contact precautions in the hospital for patients with MRSA or VRE offers a case vignette accompanied by two essays, one supporting continuing the use of contact precautions and the other recommending discontinuing them.
- Evidence to Action — Single-Dose HPV Vaccination and Cervical HPV Infection December 18, 2025Kreimer and colleagues now report in the Journal1 the results of the ESCUDDO trial, which showed that the efficacy of a single dose of either a bivalent human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine or a nonavalent formulation was similar to that of the standard two-dose schedule. This randomized trial...
- Interactive Perspective: Measles December 18, 2025