Brianna Norton, DO: Hottest Topic in Infectious Disease

Brianna Norton, DO, MPH, Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center: I’m biased, I think Hep. C is the hottest thing and infectious disease right now. You know there was a there was a time when I started treating my patients for Hep. C as an ID fellow, and people jokingly said you know that's gonna be over soon, because so many people who had it were baby boomers, we were going to treat them and then the epidemic would slow down. So I think given the fact that really, probably the largest epidemic of our generation right now, is the opioid epidemic. And unfortunately, what we're seeing is that 50—60% of these folks are infected with Hep. C. Probably the 1 of the biggest clinical advances of our time is Hep. C medication. The fact that we went from identifying the virus, to making direct-acting antivirals, to making simplified versions over such a short period of time, has really been a scientific phenomena and now unfortunately, we have to get people treated.