BACKGROUND A community-based antiretroviral therapy (ART) programme was established in 2001 in a South African township to explore the operational issues involved in providing ART in the public sector in resource-limited settings and demonstrate the feasibility of such a service. METHODS Data was analysed on a cohort of patients with symptomatic HIV disease and a CD4 lymphocyte count < 200 x ...

Purpose: To evaluate the effects of glutamine (L-Gln) or whey-protein supplementation on CD4+ and CD8+ lymphocytes in alloxan-induced diabetic rats. Methods: Thirty-two healthy male Wistar rats were used in the experiment. Eight rats served as baseline controls (G-1). The remaining 24 animals received alloxan 150mg/Kg intraperitonially dissolved in buffer solution and were equally distributed i...

BACKGROUND There are limited data regarding the relative merits of biomarkers as predictors of mortality or time to initiation of antiretroviral therapy (ART). METHODS We evaluated the usefulness of the CD4 cell count, CD4 cell percentage (CD4%), human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) load, total lymphocyte count (TLC), body mass index (BMI), and hemoglobin measured at 32 weeks' gestatio...

Introduction The reported high level of mortality among patients both on clinical care and on Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART) in Ghana in recent years has been blamed on an advance presentation of AIDS cases due to delay by patients accessing care at Hospitals. The study hypothesized that HIV and AIDS patients report at the ART clinics with very low CD4 lymphocyte count and determi...

This study defined the normal variation range for different subsets of T-lymphocyte cells count in two different Brazilian regions. We analysed the T-lymphocytes subpopulations (CD3+, CD4+, CD8+) in blood donors of two Brazilian cities, located in North (Belem, capital state of Para, indian background) and Northeast (Salvador, capital state od Bahia, African background) regions of Brazil. Resul...

Several animal studies suggest that T cell-mediated immunodeficiency may play a role in the progression of atherosclerosis. This study examined the association between lymphocyte subsets and atherosclerotic events in renal transplant recipients. A total of 302 consecutive renal transplant recipients were enrolled in this prospective study. Peripheral blood lymphocyte subsets were quantified and...

CD4+ T-lymphocyte (CD4) counts are a standard laboratory marker of disease progression in HIV infection, but expense precludes their use in large parts of the world. Total lymphocyte counts (TLC), in contrast, are widely available. We compared CD4 and TLC counts as predictors of developing AIDS or death in 831 HIV-positive out-patients (582 males and 249 females with both homosexual (males, n =...

BACKGROUND Highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) is recommended when the absolute CD4(+) T lymphocyte count is <200 cells/mm(3), and it should be considered when that count is > or =200, although the optimal timing when it is > or =200 is unclear. Because preliminary data had suggested that a low CD4(+) T lymphocyte percentage (%CD4) is associated with disease progression in persons init...

We studied whether the use of T-lymphocyte CD4 (CD4) absolute count instead of CD4 percentage could affect the decision process regarding HAART initiation in African HIV-infected pregnant women. A prospective cohort in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire before HAART was available. Participating women received a perinatal antiretroviral prophylaxis (zidovudine + single-dose of nevirapine). CD4 count and per...

BACKGROUND Estimation of the number of people in need of antiretroviral therapy (ART) in resource-limited settings requires information on the time from seroconversion to ART eligibility and from ART eligibility to death. OBJECTIVES To estimate duration from seroconversion to different ART eligibility criteria and from ART eligibility to death in HIV-infected adults in low-income and middle-i...