Until now, those in need of information on infectious diseases had to choose between encyclopedic reference texts or the infectious diseases sections in standard textbooks in internal medicine. Now there is a better alternative-Clinical Infectious Diseases fills the long-standing need for a practical yet comprehensive work that offers easy, convenient access to the topic. Of interest to internists, infectious disease specialists, and residents in training, the book is structured to give the reader essential information about the etiology and pathogenesis of various infectious...

Scientists and clinicians attending the last "New Directions in Antiviral Therapy" conference in late 1994 could hardly have predicted the revolution in the management of patients with HIV infection that has occurred since. Two new classes of antiretrovirals have been licensed, the second-site RT inhibitors and the protease inhibitors; the long in- cubation period of active HIV infection, when the infection is clinically latent, is now un- derstood to be a period of intense viral replication and turnover of CD4 lymphocytes; measurements of HI V RNA concentration in plasma have been shown to...

The three years since our last conference in San Francisco have again seen a dramatic expansion of the number of antivirals either licensed or in the late stages of clinical trials. d4T is now licensed for HIV infection, famciclovir and the oral pro-drug of acyclovir, valacyclovir, are now licensed for VZV infections in some countries. Moreover. oral ganciclovir, cidofovir, and sorivudine are not far behind. Clinical trials with the second-site reverse transcriptase inhibitors and the protease inhibitors for HlV infection are proceeding rapidly and on a broad scale, and the preliminary...