To address which of these may play a more dominant role in reducing CD8+ T cell-mediated control of virus replication in acute/early HIV infection, we measured the relative frequency of sequence variation/escape from, and assessed whether there were alterations in the avidity of 33 epitope-specific CD8+ T cell responses during the first year of HIV infection in a cohort of subjects presenting with symptomatic primary HIV infection, the majority of whom subsequently established moderate-high persisting viral loads. The gene discussed is CD8A; the disease is HIV infectious disease.