Hormonal and Metabolic Disorders of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection and Substance Abuse

There are an estimated 200 million users of an illicit drug in the world today. In addition, an estimated 40 million people are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and an estimated 180 million people are infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV). Both the use of an illicit drug and the co-occurrence of infections are associated with a multitude of medical and health consequences including hormonal and metabolic disorders. Thus, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) hosted a workshop on hormonal and metabolic disorders of HIV among substance abusers. A number of clinicians and scientists participated and discussed a wide range of issues concerning hormones, nutrition and metabolic complications in HIV and substance abuse. Their observations and the recommendations they made for future research are presented in these proceedings. The readers are encouraged to contact the NIH staff (JK, FV) for technical guidance and programmatic priorities on the subject and directly contact the individual authors for collaborations.     

Successful treatment of subacute bacterial endocarditis with streptomycin

A case of subacute bacterial endocarditis due to Streptococcus viridans, type fecalis, is presented.Inasmuch as the patient did not do well clinically on penicillin and because it was impossible to obtain blood levels sufficiently high to inhibit the growth of the organism as indicated by in vitro sensitivity tests, it seems likely that streptomycin was responsible for the eradication of the infection.