First impressions of CROI 2014

Hi. I'm Ken Hazelton, a GP S100 prescriber from Orange NSW, and the grateful recipient of an ASHM scholarship to CROI,  Boston 2014. HIV is important to my daily General Practice, but not my main work.

I don't  think my blog is for anyone who is full on with HIV medicine, I think it might be of more interest and relevance to GPs who see a few patients or are interested in where HIV is going, and who might relate to the things that get my attention.

Having cleared the decks.....day 1 of CROI started with positive messages about the likelihood, sometime, of a cure for HIV. The qualification was that cures would probably start with subgroups like babies, and that there are still major barriers to eradicating the last of virus from reservoirs in lymph tissue and macrophages. The famous cure of Tim Brown, the  "Berlin patient", is a one off, involving whole body irradiation and 2 sequential stem  cell transplants from a donor with a HIV-favourable genotype. None of this is feasible for others, as fascinating as it is medically.

The other really interesting but frustrating session for me was an interactive Hepatitis C treatment decision panel. The annoying thing was the right answers from a US perspective were always Sofusbuvir and Semepravir, and that Telepravir and Bocepravir were old hat. This was on the basis of inferior effect, and much nastier side effects, but the latter two are the agents we are only now getting funded access to in Australia. More another day.