CD4 and AIDS: The 1029 excluded patients did not differ significantly from the 3336 patients available for the analysis in terms of age (40 years old on average in both groups), HIV transmission categories (injecting drug users: 20% versus 21%; heterosexual: 36% versus 30%), proportion of cART-treated patients (64% versus 67%), plasma HIV RNA (54% versus 50% with ≥1000 copies/ml), mean CD4 count (449 versus 450 cells/μL) and proportion of patients with a previous AIDS diagnosis (21% in both groups).