Retroviruses Conference: For More Information
In-depth information from the 5th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections is available through conference abstracts, online summaries, and lectures with slides.Conference Abstracts
These are available through the official conference Web site, http://www.retroconference.org. The search software works well. There is a small hassle in that you have to go through a registration process every time, with a password that you assign yourself and then need to remember. Also, the screens can be confusing, in that you may have to scroll around in order to find the buttons you need to get through the registration procedure. (The conference abstracts were also provided in advance to registrants in book form and on a disk, but these are not readily available after the conference. The abstracts are also not available on any other Web site.)
The searchable abstracts are particularly useful when you want to find out about a particular topic (such as a drug name) which lends itself to a keyword search. Be aware that all but a few "late breaker" abstracts were submitted months in advance; most of them are still correct today--even if not complete--because authors usually avoid factual statements which would be likely to change.
Online Summaries
Several different summaries of the conference, or certain parts of it, have been published on AIDS Web sites--sometimes in the form of courses with CME (continuing medical education) credit. These summaries are usually the fastest way to get both an overview and the details of those topics which received wide attention at the meeting.
All of the following are excellent. Here are some of their particular strengths:
HIV InSite, http://hivinsite.ucsf.edu, reviewed the information most likely to be useful to physicians. When you get to the site, select the Retroviruses summary and analysis by Steven Deeks, M.D.--not the other Retroviruses link, which takes you to the official conference site.
Project Inform, http://www.projinf.org, has detailed summaries of each day of the conference, written for the community, and will include slides prepared for its community forums. Project Inform's analysis has been more open than others in addressing problems with the scientific direction of the conference itself, reflecting broader problems in AIDS research--issues widely discussed but seldom made public.
Clinical Care Options for HIV, (website no longer available), has the most extensive report on the conference (enough material to fill about 10 issues of AIDS Treatment News), organized into several CME courses. It includes background information to provide perspective on some of the conference presentations.
The Journal of the American Medical Association, http://pubs.ama-assn.org/cgi/collection/hiv_aids, has both original reports and a file of Reuters news coverage about the conference. When you get to the site, select Newsline.
The Body, http://www.thebody.com, has conference summaries from a number of authors, many with the Seattle Treatment Education Project (STEP).
The National AIDS Treatment Advocacy Project, http://www.natap.org, is preparing a summary which will include resistance and cross-resistance, adverse events, new protease inhibitors and other new drugs, and some of the pediatric presentations. We have not seen this report before going to press.
Lectures with Slides
About half of the talks given at the Retroviruses conference were recorded, and are available either by audiotape, or as Internet audio (but not as transcripts) through the official conference Web site, http://www.retroconference.org. The other talks are not available unless you were in the room. Usually the ones you cannot get are the ones with new data; the most likely reason for the blackout is that if the lectures were released, some journals would later refuse to publish the researchers' papers, on the grounds that the data had already been "published" at the conference. For non-specialists, fortunately, the overview lectures and the symposia, which you can obtain, are usually the most valuable.
The lectures are best heard through the conference Web site, because the slides used by the speaker are displayed along with the audio. Also, the lectures are free through the Web site, while the tapes must be purchased. One is likely to find some software hassles concerning the audio transmission of the lectures (although not as bad as last year); it may take an hour or more the first time, to download special software which is required and to get the process going.
If instead you want to obtain the lectures on audio tape, they are available from Sound Images, Inc., in Englewood, Colorado; phone 303-649-1811, fax 303-790-4230. Ask for the audio tape order form for the 5th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, Feb. 1-5, 1998. Although slides are not available with the tapes, most of these talks do not rely heavily on slides.
