Since inflammation is known to be a driver of disease progression and CD4+ T cell loss in HIV-1 infection (Fiebig et al., 2003; Roberts et al., 2010; Jiao et al., 2012; Shive et al., 2014; Claiborne et al., 2015), we wanted to determine whether there were differences in inflammatory biomarkers that could explain the differences in CD4+ T cell decline in subtype A and C infected individuals in the Protocol C cohorts (Amornkul et al., 2013). The gene discussed is CD4; the disease is HIV-1 infection.