An ongoing dialogue on HIV/AIDS, infectious diseases,
December 9th, 2010
Chronic Lyme Tough to Diagnose, Tough to Treat
Over at the Chicago Tribune, there is this superb review of the Chronic Lyme disease issue. Lyme disease is real. The bacterial infection, chiefly transmitted by deer ticks, can cause rashes, swollen joints and inflamed nerves, and usually is curable with a round of antibiotics. But doctors around the country are telling patients with common […]
October 29th, 2010
With HIV Medication Adherence, It’s Not a Competition
There has been an irresistable urge for people — doctors, public health officers, politicians, journalists, the usual pundits — to compare adherence to HIV treatment in resource-rich vs. resource-limited setting. I suspect this is because the whole issue got off to a famously bad start in 2001, when then-head of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Andrew […]
August 3rd, 2010
HIV Testing: NY Makes Progress; Massachusetts … Not So Much
From the office of New York Governor David Paterson: The Governor signed into law S.8227/A.11487, which will allow patients to agree to HIV testing as part of a general signed consent to medical care that remains in effect until it is revoked or expires. The bill will also, among other things: allow oral consent to […]
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 […]
April 24th, 2010
Choosing an Official State Microbe
Wisconsin has selected Lactococcus lactis as its official state microbe: The people of the state of Wisconsin, represented in senate and assembly, do enact as follows: SECTION 1. 1.10 (3) (t) of the statutes is created to read: 1.10 (3) (t) The bacterium Lactococcus lactis is the state microbe. SECTION 2. 1.10 (4) of the statutes is amended […]
April 22nd, 2010
Should Transmission of HIV be a Crime?
Not according to Journal Watch editor and New York Times writer Abigail Zuger, writing here in the Times. She’s referring to the recent Darren Chiacchia case, where his former partner has filed a legal complaint that Chiacchia did not disclose having HIV — potentially a first-degree felony in Florida. Were it a matter of science […]
April 4th, 2010
San Francisco Public Health: Treatment Recommended for All with HIV
Could there be anything more interesting than the start of the baseball season? Maybe, because this is quite something: In a major shift of HIV treatment policy, San Francisco public health doctors have begun to advise patients to start taking antiviral medicines as soon as they are found to be infected, rather than waiting — sometimes […]
March 31st, 2010
C diff Guidelines: Metronidazole Still Preferred?
IDSA and The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) have published Clinical Practice Guidelines for Clostridium difficile infection. Not surprisingly, it’s a comprehensive, extensively-referenced document that will be an invaluable resource, especially since the previous version is approximately 15 years old. But with the caveat that I’m not an expert in this area, these particular […]
March 24th, 2010
Now for Some Good News: TB Cases Continue to Decline
From the latest MMWR: This figure speaks for itself, but two sentences from the Editorial Note deserve highlighting: The 11.4% decrease in reported TB rate in 2009 is the largest single-year decrease ever recorded. From 1953 to 1993, the single largest annual percentage decrease in TB case rate was 11.1% in 1956 Since I started my […]
February 2nd, 2010
Bats in the Bedroom: Canadians Make a Policy Change
ID doctors know all too well the panicky call — usually from a terrified friend, family member, or colleague, or possibly the emergency room or primary care doc — about finding a bat in the house. Usually in the bedroom. (In one memorable case, it was the house cat’s leaping in the air to try […]
Paul E. Sax, MD
Associate Editor
NEJM Clinician
Biography | Disclosures & Summaries
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