On August 9 an excellent in-depth summary of what HIV medical professionals and well-informed patients most need to know from the XIV International AIDS Conference (July 7-12 in Barcelona, Spain) was published on the Medscape Web site, http://hiv.medscape.com. It consists of four articles, and a test that physicians, pharmacists, and RNs can take for continuing medical education (CME) credit (but anyone can read the articles or take the test for their own information). Before reading, it's a good. idea to check the "Learning Objectives" for the CME, for guidance on what's most important to remember from the material. [Note: The first time you use this site you will probably need to register, but registration is free.]

The articles are:

* Initial Antiretroviral Therapy: Further Insights on When to Start and What to Use, by Joseph J. Eron Jr., M.D.,

* Antiretroviral Therapy in Treatment-Experienced Patients, by William A. O'Brien, M.D., M.S.,

* Update on Lipodystrophy...Or Is It Just Lipoatrophy?, by Donald P. Kotler, M.D., and

* Opportunistic Infections and Coinfections: Focus on Fungi and Hepatitis, by William G. Powderly, M.D.

Many patients will find one of the first two articles most important, because they discuss some of the newer options in antiretroviral treatment. The lipodystrophy article is the most complex, because our basic understanding of HIV-related lipodystrophy may be changing. In addition to these four articles, there is some optional material that is not required for CME credit.

This CME course is available at: http://hiv.medscape.com, and will remain online for one year.

Comment

The first reports from Barcelona were next-day coverage of individual sessions, which were published by several different organizations. Now, a month after the conference, we are getting reports that summarize information from many conference sessions and from other sources as well, outlining how our understanding has changed due to the findings presented at the meeting.

We missed the Barcelona conference unexpectedly (see AIDS Treatment News #38 1)--and especially missed the many informal conversations in hallways and other informal meetings that help to put the whole conference in perspective. Fortunately these conversations continue by email--although this medium would be more useful if we could teach people to communicate better when sending email to large groups (for example, by making each message coherent to others who may not be as involved as the sender in the background and context of that message).

The official conference site, http://www.aids2002.org, leaves much to be desired--although fortunately it does allow searching for any word in the abstracts, important for locating specialized information.

So far, the Medscape CME is the best summary we have seen of the clinical importance of this conference. It is likely that several comparable reports will be published over the coming months.

COPYRIGHT 2002 John S. James
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group