HIV/AIDS News & Information

Speaker: Jo-Anne van Burik, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Micafungin (Fujisawa Healthcare, Inc.), a member of a new class of antifungal agents known as the echinocandins, has demonstrated a greater overall success rate than fluconazole (Generic Diflucon, Pfizer) as antifungal prophylactic therapy and has [...]

Speaker: Joel Gallant, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, Department of Infectious Disease, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore.
A tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF) (Viread®, Gilead)-based regimen has proved to be as effective in maintaining undetectable levels of HIV RNA as a medication stavudine (d4T) (Zerit canadian, Bristol Myers Squibb)-based regimen in treatment-naive, HIV-infected patients, while [...]

Speaker: Jan Gerstoft, MD, Senior Consultant, Rigs Hospi-talet, Copenhagen, Denmark.
A 48-week trial on the efficacy and safety data is the first head-to-head study of ritonavir (Novir medication, Abbott)-boosted protease inhibitor (PI) therapy in treatment-experienced patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. Results indicated that saquinavir (Fortovase®, Roche)/ritonavir reduced HIV levels to less than 50 copies [...]

Once-Daily Short-Duration Antimicrobial Therapy for Community-Acquired Pneumonia
Speaker: John Pullman, MD, Infectious Diseases Specialist, Internal Medicine, Mercury Medical Center, Butte, Montana.
Telithromycin (Ketek™, Aventis), administered once daily for five to ten days to patients with CAP, has been found to be as effective and safe as standard twice-daily, 10-day treatment with clarithromycin (Biaxin tablet, Abbott), a commonly [...]

How are you doing?” I cautiously asked.
“Pretty bad,” he sarcastically answered. “How would you be doing if your body was full of cancer and your doctors told you there was nothing they could do?”
It was a typical answer from him and I immediately regretted asking the question. “Is that really what your oncologist told you?” [...]

Every age has its medical terrors —bubonic plague (in the 6th, 14th, and 17th centuries), smallpox (in the 16th to 18th centuries), the so-called “Spanish flu” of 1918, which actually originated in the U.S., the AIDS pandemic—and, now, smallpox again? Well, maybe not—but that might be because the national program to inoculate 500,000 health care [...]

Beta blockers with intrinsic sympathomimetic activity, such as acebutolol (Sectral, ESP Pharma) and pindolol (Visken, Novartis), should be avoided, because this property may increase mortality. As for beta blockers without intrinsic sympathomimetic activity, it seems prudent to use those agents that do improve survival. These include both the nonselective beta blocker carvedilol and the cardioselective [...]