Clinical Update with Dr. Daniel Griffin

Vincent Racaniello (0:00)

This Week in Virology, the podcast about viruses, the kind that make you sick.

From Microbe TV, this is TWiV, This Week in Virology, episode 1366, recorded on October 14th, 2026 I'm Vincent Racaniello, and you're listening to the podcast, All About Viruses. Joining me today from New York, Daniel Griffin.

Daniel Griffin (0:32)

Hello, everyone.

Vincent Racaniello (0:34)

Back to New York, eh, Daniel?

Daniel Griffin (0:36)

We are back to New York. You know, I miss Colorado a little. You know, I spent 20 years of my life out there. So it's, it feels like home in certain ways.

Vincent Racaniello (0:45)

I can imagine. Speaking of home, what's on your bow tie today?

Daniel Griffin (0:49)

Actually, that's perfect. Giardia, beaver fever.

Vincent Racaniello (0:55)

Wonderful.

Daniel Griffin (0:57)

All right. Well, hello, everyone. Let's start with our quotation. We got a bunch to cover today. We're going to cover, you know, viruses and diseases, not Aspen Groves. But talk about that, too. But Bertrand Russell, the whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves. And wiser people so full of doubts.

I don't know if that's the whole problem, but it is a problem.

Vincent Racaniello (1:27)

Yep. I agree.

Daniel Griffin (1:30)

All right. So in our news, a couple of things. Hand, foot and mouth disease cases spike at Penn this fall. This is University of Pennsylvania. They've seen an increase in hand, foot and mouth disease among undergraduates this fall.

So what is hand, foot and mouth disease? This is a disease due to coxsackie virus. They actually give a little bit of background. Now, the problem with coxsackie virus is very contagious. It's in the nose, it's in the throat, it's in the... You get these tiny little blisters on your hand, feet, your mouth, and there's virus in the fluid and all these blisters everywhere. There's virus in the feces. Now, usually, you don't see it in these populations. You usually see it in little kids, right? And then the parents get it because there's been a certain period of time since they had it.

I don't know if you remember when your kids were little, did they give you hand, foot, and mouth disease, Vincent?

Vincent Racaniello (2:36)

No, never had it. Because I used to work on polio, so I had immunity.

Daniel Griffin (2:40)

Oh, actually, yeah, because that's a good comment.

Vincent Racaniello (2:43)

Well, I don't know if it's...

There may be cross-reactive immunity. I just don't know.

I had a lot of immunity to polio virus having worked on it. But I'm very familiar with this because I used to think about coxsackie viruses all the time. They're highly related to polio virus. So what's going on at Penn? What's the reason? Do we have outbreaks now and then like this in a university setting?

Daniel Griffin (3:07)

Not commonly. This is a little bit uncommon as they point out. It's tough too, right? But they make us like, oh, no, no touching and kissing. I'm like, oh my gosh, you know, it's college.

There's a lot of that stuff going on. And this is not an enveloped virus, right? This is an unenveloped virus. I can't imagine those hand alcohol things are going to work very well.

Vincent Racaniello (3:31)

No, no hand alcohol. Not going to do it.

Daniel Griffin (3:33)

No. Yeah. So you got to kind of just unfortunately, you're going to get it. You'll get through it. All right. The article HIV Service Delivery After the Pepfar and USAID HIV Funding Withdrawal in Uganda and Zimbabwe and Interrupted Time Series Study was published in The Lancet Global Health. This is not good news. The study used data from four non-governmental organization NGOs in Uganda and Zimbabwe that had received Pepfar funding for HIV services and work with high risk populations, researchers found that the number of people receiving antiretroviral therapy dropped by 31.5%.

We used to talk about this 90-90-90, like diagnose 90% of the folks, get 90% of them on medicine, keep 90% of them with viral suppression. And the real reason we want to do that, well, several reasons, but ART turns HIV from a fatal disease into a chronic one. It prevents transmission. If you treat these folks, it keeps it from transmitting. Now, overall, in addition to what we're hearing here, the preventive services that complement antiretroviral therapies such as condom distribution, that's down by 62.7%. HIV testing is down by 63.8%.

Among the three NGOs that provided data on use of pre-exposure prophylaxis, PrEP, that is down by 71.6%.

Vincent Racaniello (5:12)

This is just so unacceptable that every Republican went along with this and didn't challenge it or try and reverse it. There is no reason to remove this funding.