An ongoing dialogue on HIV/AIDS, infectious diseases,
December 29th, 2008
Required Reading: Introducing the “iPatient”
Many HIV/ID specialists first heard of Abraham Verghese from his book My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story, which was published in 1994. He told us what it was like to be a newly-minted ID doctor, thrust into treating the first cases of HIV/AIDS in a remote town in Tennessee during the mid-1980s. Compelling stuff — […]
December 23rd, 2008
Flu Resistance to Oseltamivir: The Bugs Win Again
I must admit, the recent report that 49 of the 50 H1N1 flu viruses tested by the CDC are resistant to oseltamivir caught me by surprise. For the non-math majors among the readership, that’s a 98% resistance rate. Yikes. Actually, the rate of resistance is so high that at first I didn’t believe it when my […]
December 10th, 2008
Unintended Consequences of ART “Rollout”
According to this BBC article, teenagers in South Africa are grinding up antiretrovirals and then smoking them for their “hallucinogenic and relaxing effect”. (Apologies for the pun on the title.) It’s impossible to tell with a report like this how widespread the practice is, but it’s potentially worrisome. And no mention in the article which antivirals are […]
December 5th, 2008
New Case Definition for HIV Infection? Yawn …
The CDC has revised its case definition for HIV infection and AIDS, so that now laboratory evidence — a positive antibody test, or detectable HIV RNA or DNA – is required for the diagnosis. It’s not intended to guide clinical practice, but still — what took them so long? A clinical diagnosis of AIDS was only […]
December 4th, 2008
More Support for HIV Screening
On Monday December 1 — World AIDS Day, if you’re keeping track — the American College of Physicians released a position paper supporting routine HIV screening for adolescents and adults in the United States. (If you don’t want to read the whole thing, we’ll have a perfectly-executed summary by the inimitable Abbie Zuger on our AIDS […]
November 30th, 2008
How to End the HIV Epidemic
Answer: Put everyone on treatment. Conspicuously absent for decades, the prevention part of the “when to start antiviral therapy?” question has now moved front and center in two recent papers: In this week’s Lancet, a group from the WHO estimated what would happen if there were annual universal HIV testing, and then immediate treatment for […]
November 25th, 2008
Coming Soon: A Great Advance in TB Diagnostics
An all-too-frequent problem in the ID clinical world is the case where tuberculosis is possibly the diagnosis, but confirming it is difficult, or impossible. Now, in a scientific breakthrough of such magnitude that it warranted front page coverage in our local newspaper, I am pleased to report that we may have a solution: giant rats. Yes, […]
November 22nd, 2008
“Salvage” Rx for HIV: Macro Good News, Micro Bad News
I’ve written before how the number of treatment experienced patients who have no options for successful therapy has dwindled to a tiny — but unfortunate — few. Darunavir, maraviroc, raltegravir, and etravirine (in order of FDA approval) are that good. Two presentations at recent scientific meetings confirmed the staggering efficacy of these newer drugs. Notably, […]
November 17th, 2008
Promising C diff Rx, and Google as Surveillance Tool
A few items from recent ID/HIV news: Bad enough when it happens once, relapsing C diff is one of the modern plagues for which our bag of tricks sometimes comes up woefully short. (Anything that tests stool transplants as a therapy is pretty desperate.) Here was some bright news on the treatment front, however: an […]
November 10th, 2008
Yes, Just a Case Report, but Incredibly Cool
At this year’s Retrovirus Conference (was it really this year’s conference, seems like much longer ago than that), there was a poster presentation summarizing a very unusual case. A man with HIV, stable on antiretroviral therapy, developed acute leukemia. He underwent an allogeneic bone marrow transplant — here’s the kicker — from a donor who […]
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.
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