One of the first long-term studies on the effects of highly active antiretroviral therapy shows that only about 39% of people who began therapy between 1996 and 1997 and stuck to it for four years were able to achieve a CD4-cell count above 500.
The study, published in the October 13 edition of Archives of Internal Medicine, also shows that 15.6% of the 2,235 participants never posted a CD4 count above 200, an AIDS-defining threshold. Those who did achieve CD4 counts above 500 after four years were more likely to have had higher nadir and baseline CD4 levels and a more sustained reduction in viral loads than those who did not reach the 500-cell mark.
