An ongoing dialogue on HIV/AIDS, infectious diseases,
December 1st, 2011
World AIDS Day Wanderings
Some quick HIV and ID Observations (better blog title anyone?) for this 2011 World AIDS Day: Through meticulous, painstaking research that took me all of 10 seconds, I’ve learned that the first World AIDS Day was in 1988. What ever did we do before the internet? Looks like New York City’s health department is following […]
November 29th, 2011
HIV Cure Makes the NY Times — Anything New to Report?
It’s right there, on page 1 of today’s Science Times: Medical researchers are again in pursuit of a goal they had all but abandoned: curing AIDS. Until recently, the possibility seemed little more than wishful thinking. But the experiences of two patients now suggest to many scientists that it may be achievable. Two patients? What, […]
November 28th, 2011
Tenofovir Gel Disappointing in VOICE Trial
From the Microbicide Trials Network: VOICE, an HIV prevention trial that has been evaluating two antiretroviral (ARV)-based approaches for preventing the sexual transmission of HIV in women – daily use of one of two different ARV tablets or of a vaginal gel – will be dropping the vaginal gel from the study … The DSMB […]
November 9th, 2011
HCV Treatment Studies at AASLD: Wow … and I Mean WOW!
I didn’t attend “The Liver Meeting” (the nickname for the annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, AASLD), but the studies presented there this week on HCV treatment were absolutely mind-boggling. “Breathtaking!” said one of my HCV-oriented colleagues. “Hopeful is an understatement,” said another. An example: Dual Oral Combination Therapy […]
October 29th, 2011
Will An Antiretroviral Patch Help Adherence? Doubtful …
This little nugget came up recently, found by our Journal Watch Executive Editor: Preliminary research suggests that a patch could deliver an AIDS drug to patients … The researchers successfully used transdermal patches to administer 96 percent of an AIDS drug to simulated skin over a week. “Still, the important limitation of pills, regardless of how […]
October 23rd, 2011
TB, Timing of Antiretroviral Therapy, and Being a Lumper Rather Than a Splitter
Three key papers on timing of ART in patients with TB have just been published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Fortunately, Carlos Del Rio has done a bang-up job summarizing them in Journal Watch AIDS Clinical Care. And if you’re wondering how we got our title for Carlos’ piece, here’s an e-mail between our Executive Editor […]
October 19th, 2011
Going, Going, Gone … HIV Treatment Failure Is Disappearing in People Who Take Their Meds
World Series time, hence the baseball reference in the title. (Doesn’t take much.) But over in Lancet Infectious Diseases — which has turned out to be a terrific journal, by the way — there’s a study reminding us that advances in HIV treatment in the late 2000s were truly spectacular. The goal of the paper […]
October 4th, 2011
Hormonal Contraception MAY Increase Risk of HIV
From the pages of Lancet Infectious Diseases, a study from Africa: We aimed to assess the association between hormonal contraceptive use and risk of HIV-1 acquisition by women and HIV-1 transmission from HIV-1-infected women to their male partners … Among 1314 couples in which the HIV-1-seronegative partner was female, rates of HIV-1 acquisition were 6·61 […]
October 4th, 2011
Spanish HIV Vaccine Story Gets Lots of Attention — Here’s Why
If you’re looking for a good way to pass the time while running errands, traveling, or walking to work, I highly recommend the Freakonomics podcasts, which have taught me all sorts of interesting things. Such as the fact that suicide is more common than murder in the USA, but gets way less attention. And how […]
October 3rd, 2011
CASCADE: When to Start, (Yet) Another Take
As we await the enrollment, analysis, and results of the START study — which is randomizing patients with CD4>500 to start HIV therapy vs waiting until the CD4 falls to 350 — much of the research on “when to start” ART in patients with high CD4’s comes from observational studies. Several have already been published […]
Paul E. Sax, MD
Associate Editor
NEJM Clinician
Biography | Disclosures & Summaries
Learn more about HIV and ID Observations.
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