COVID-19 pandemic personal development plan: A model for maximising higher specialty training.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has led to multiple service delivery changes across acute care sectors in the UK. Due to increased responsibility for care of COVID-19 patients, medical trainees across all specialties might experience difficulty in achieving certain competencies for their training curriculum due to changes in learning opportunities. While there might be a tendency to perceive these changes negatively in terms of the impact on training, we think this unprecedented situation might present a unique learning opportunity.

The need for improved discharge criteria for hospitalised patients with COVID-19-implications for patients in long-term care facilities.

In the COVID-19 pandemic, patients who are older and residents of long-term care facilities (LTCF) are at greatest risk of worse clinical outcomes. We reviewed discharge criteria for hospitalised COVID-19 patients from 10 countries with the highest incidence of COVID-19 cases as of 26 July 2020. Five countries (Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Chile and Iran) had no discharge criteria; the remaining five (USA, India, Russia, South Africa and the UK) had discharge guidelines with large inter-country variability.

Protection afforded by an HIV vaccine candidate in macaques depends on the dose of SIVmac251 at challenge exposure.

We used the simian immunodeficiency virus mac251 (SIV(mac251)) macaque model to study the effect of the dose of mucosal exposure on vaccine efficacy. We immunized macaques with a DNA prime followed by SIV gp120 protein immunization with ALVAC-SIV and gp120 in alum, and we challenged them with SIV(mac251) at either a single high dose or at two repeated low-dose exposures to a 10-fold-lower dose. Infection was neither prevented nor modified following a single high-dose challenge of the immunized macaques.

Gastrointestinal-associated lymphoid tissue immune reconstitution in a randomized clinical trial of raltegravir versus non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor-based regimens.

Objectives: To examine immune restoration in duodenal tissue and correlates of reduction of immune activation in chronic HIV-infected patients randomized to different treatment regimens.

Design: Randomized clinical trial (RCT) comparing raltegravir to a non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor-based regimen, both with fixed-dose tenofovir difumerate/emtricitabine.

Methods: Antiretroviral therapy (ART)-naive volunteers underwent upper endoscopy for duodenal biopsies before and after 9 months of therapy.