The proportion of "late presenters/AIDS presenters" in our series of new HIV-1 diagnoses (28.7%) is fully consistent with the data from the large Italian cohort of antiretroviral-naive patients (Icona), where 29% of 968 patients enrolled between 1997 and 2000 were first tested for anti-HIV-1 antibodies after the onset of an AIDS-defining condition and/or with a number of CD4+ T lymphocytes < 200/μL. This evidence concerns the gene CD4 and AIDS.