{"id":2182,"date":"2011-12-01T13:54:11","date_gmt":"2011-12-01T18:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/?p=2182"},"modified":"2015-06-04T15:15:28","modified_gmt":"2015-06-04T19:15:28","slug":"world-aids-day-wanderings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/world-aids-day-wanderings\/2011\/12\/01\/","title":{"rendered":"World AIDS Day Wanderings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some quick HIV and ID Observations (better blog title anyone?) for this 2011 World AIDS Day:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Through meticulous, painstaking research that took me all of 10 seconds, I&#8217;ve learned that the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/World_AIDS_Day\" target=\"_blank\">first World AIDS Day was in 1988.<\/a> What ever did we do before the internet?<\/li>\n<li>Looks like New York City&#8217;s health department \u00a0is following San Francisco&#8217;s lead in <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/nyc-recommends-aids-drugs-person-hiv-054601711.html\" target=\"_blank\">recommending that all people with HIV get treated<\/a> &#8212; for personal <em>and<\/em> public health benefit. Important for many reasons, but these two in particular: 1) New York has by far the largest number of people living with HIV of any US city, and 2) It doesn&#8217;t appear that this policy change means an infusion of new funding. \u00a0Not surprised, but let&#8217;s face it &#8212; more people on treatment \u00a0is initially going to cost more (meds, providers, outreach). Well worth it, in my opinion.<\/li>\n<li>Of course people can&#8217;t get treated if they&#8217;re not in care, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/mmwr\/preview\/mmwrhtml\/mm60e1129a1.htm?s_cid=mm60e1129a1_e&amp;source=govdelivery\" target=\"_blank\">this <em>MMWR <\/em>report<\/a> paints a pretty bleak picture of what proportion of all HIV patients in the United States are virologically suppressed &#8212; only 28%! Here&#8217;s the key finding: &#8220;Of the estimated 942,000 persons with HIV who were aware of their infection [out of an estimated 1.2 million with HIV total],  approximately 77% were linked to care, and <strong>51% remained in care.&#8221;<\/strong> In other words, those diagnosed and not in care greatly exceed those undiagnosed &#8212; and saying it&#8217;s important to get them back into care and on treatment is kind of like saying that people who smoke should quit. Everyone agrees, but how do we make it happen?<\/li>\n<li>As a card-carrying member of the <a href=\"https:\/\/actgnetwork.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">AIDS Clinical Trials Group<\/a> (ACTG &#8212; the <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2011\/12\/artgal36.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">cards they give us<\/a> are really nice), I must point out that 25 years ago tomorrow &#8212; December 2, 1986 &#8212; <a href=\"https:\/\/actgnetwork.org\/node\/13061\" target=\"_blank\">Margaret Fischl enrolled the first patient in the first-ever ACTG study,<\/a> Study 002. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed?term=actg\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Lots <\/em>accomplished<\/a> since then by the ACTG, and there have been\u00a0<em>lots<\/em> of study numbers. But here&#8217;s something you might find reassuring &#8212; no one can keep them all straight!<\/li>\n<li>Speaking of Margaret, here&#8217;s a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wgbh\/pages\/frontline\/aids\/interviews\/fischl.html\" target=\"_blank\">terrific interview<\/a> she did a few years back about the early days of the HIV epidemic &#8212; highly recommended.<\/li>\n<li>Finally, is anyone else bothered by the fact that coformulated medications are increasingly being written in alphabetical order? That is, &#8220;emtricitabine-tenofovir&#8221; instead of &#8220;tenofovir-emtricitabine&#8221; (as it has been for years) or, very strangely, &#8220;emtricitabine-rilpivirine-tenofovir&#8221;, which splits the NRTIs with the NNRTI in the middle. The first time I saw it was in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nejm.org\/doi\/full\/10.1056\/NEJMoa1011205\" target=\"_blank\">iPrEx study<\/a>, and now it&#8217;s happening more and more. What&#8217;s up with that?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Sorry I haven&#8217;t been able to post images recently &#8212; I was quite fond of <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/index.php\/important-reminder-dont-eat-garden-slugs\/2011\/10\/25\/\" target=\"_blank\">this one<\/a> &#8212; but at least I can still link to them.\u00a0And though it has absolutely nothing to do with World AIDS Day, here&#8217;s a <a href=\"http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/6wmnycg\" target=\"_blank\">personal favorite<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8217;ve learned that the first World AIDS Day was in 1988. What ever did we do before the internet? Looks like New York City&#8217;s health department \u00a0is following [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,8,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hiv","category-infectious-diseases","category-patient-care","category-research"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}