There was also no evidence of an association of pre-cART CD4 slope and progression to AIDS or death when we restricted our analysis to 961 patients with a CD4 cell count >350 cells/μl at cART initiation (Table 2) or when the pre-cART CD4 slope was entered as a binary covariate (≥100 versus <100 cells/μl decline per year) instead of as a continuous covariate (unpublished data). This evidence concerns the gene CD4 and AIDS.