November 2014

Patients with Lyme disease know that their symptoms and the effects of the disease can be debilitating and last for a long time, often persisting even after treatment.

A national clinical trial has found non-efavirenz antiretroviral therapy effective as a first-line treatment, which is good news for patients with HIV who are ineligible to usea the common drug.

From 2001 to 2010, the infection rate of a particular intestinal "superbug" has doubled, with increases in mortality rates and length of hospital stays reflecting this trend.

Treatment with a combination of tenofovir and pegylated interferon yielded higher rates of hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) loss than when either drug was used singly. Further, with longer therapy duration improved results.

Hoping their discovery will lead to novel treatments, University of Florida researchers have successfully manufactured the human norovirus in a cell culture dish.

A team of researchers at George Washington University has reported that next-generation sequencing of sputum samples taken from patients in the intensive care unit can accurately identify the strain of ventilator-associated pneumonia a patient is infected with.

Patients who have HCV infection are at high risk for arthralgia, myalgias, pruritus, neuropathy, and decompensated livers. Until recently the sole available treatment was interferon. After the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved ribavirin, patients who took ribavirin plus interferon responded better. Now, the FDA has approved a small selection of oral antivirals to treat hepatitis C.

Researchers have found that maintenance treatment with methadone or buprenorphine may help prevent hepatitis C infection among injection drug users, a population with the highest risk of infection of the virus.

Despite previous research suggesting HIV patients have an increased likelihood of suffering from a heart attack, kidney failure, or cancer, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health investigators showed the age they encounter these conditions were similar to their uninfected counterparts.