Polyclonal serum-free light chains elevation in HIV-infected patients.

We investigated the association between polyclonal serum-free light chains and prognostic biomarkers routinely used in the setting of HIV infection. For this purpose serum samples of 182 HIV-infected patients from the Italian Cohort of Antiretroviral Naive Patients foundation cohort were analysed. We found that polyclonal serum free light chains above the upper normal limit are strongly correlated in HIV-infected patients with advancing age, shorter time of undetectable HIV viremia, higher viral load and with lower CD4 cell count at sample

Is the CD4 cell percentage a better marker of immunosuppression than the absolute CD4 cell count in HIV-infected patients with cirrhosis?

Recently, it was shown that cirrhotic patients without human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection had low CD4 cell counts and normal CD4 cell percentages, suggesting that, for HIV-infected persons, the CD4 cell percentage might be a more accurate marker of disease progression than the absolute CD4 cell count. In cirrhotic HIV-infected persons in the Italian Cohort of Antiretroviral-Naive Patients, the absolute CD4 cell count seemed to be better predictor of the risk of developing an acquired immunodeficiency syndrome-defining illness than the CD4 cell percentage