Little progress has been made in eliminating health care–associated infections (HAIs), according to the 2009 National Healthcare Quality Report and the National Healthcare Disparities Report recently issued by the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).1 More »

As publicly funded health care payment programs have grown over decades because of demographic shifts and expansion of coverage, comparative effectiveness research (CER) has emerged to address value in health care. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2008 (ARRA) included $1.1 billion for CER initiatives, and the new health care legislation created the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, which will be funded with $500 million or more annually. In these efforts exist the... More »

A group of 18 senators have proposed to reverse a policy that imposes a lifetime ban on donating blood for men who have had any gay sex since 1977. In writing to the FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, the lawmakers stressed that the science has dramatically changed since the ban was established in 1983 at the emergence of the HIV/AIDS crisis.1 More »

Sporotrichosis is a fungal infection that typically results in cutaneous or lymphocutaneous disease, although other, more severe, life-threatening manifestations do occur. This article reviews updated treatment guidelines, which state that itraconazole has become the preferred therapy for most forms of infection. Amphotericin B remains the mainstay of treatment for severe cases, but lipid formulations are now preferred because of their more favorable toxicity profile. Also, fluconazole has been... More »

The US decision to freeze spending on HIV programs in several African countries has caused concern that some of the progress made in the global AIDS epidemic will be reversed. More »