CD4 and HIV infectious disease: As shown in Table 1, most of the participants (n=56, 84.8%) were at the second stage of HIV infection (i.e., chronic HIV infection/clinical latency, according to the classification by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, (CDC, [26]), with a mean (SD) nadir CD4+ T-lymphocyte count of 377.9 (244.7) cells/μL.