Gender, Race, and Geography: Do They Matter in Primary Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection?

(See the article by Meditz et al, on pages 442–451.) Gender and racial differences in CD41 T cell counts and human immunodefi-ciency virus (HIV)-1 RNA levels among chronically HIV-infected persons have been shown to exist in multiple studies [1, 2], and although women have sig-nificantly lower plasma HIV-1 RNA levels than men, the rate of progression to AIDS is similar among men and women [1]. Similarly, several studies have suggested that blacks and Latinos have lower CD41 T cell counts and higher viral loads at presentation, but this is likely due to delays in diagnosi