HIV-positive children who have low CD4 counts when starting antiretroviral (ARV) treatment by and large experience a rebound to normal levels of those immune cells. Publishing their findings in the journal AIDS, researchers analyzed data on more than 3,700 children who contracted HIV before or during birth, following the CD4 counts of 933 children from this group who were at least 5 years old upon beginning ARVs.

After one year on HIV meds, 86 percent of the children achieved a CD4 count of 500 or above. After two years, this figure increased to 92 percent.

The median amount of times the children took to reach 500 CD4s were 1.29 years for those who started treatment with fewer than 200 CD4s, 0.78 for those who started with 200 to 349 CD4s, and 0.46 years for those who started with 350 to 499 CD4s.

Just nine children (1 percent) experienced an AIDS-defining illness during treatment, with four of them occurring during the first six months that they had an undetectable viral load. Whether children had above or below 500 CD4s did not apparently affect their likelihood of experiencing such an illness.

“The comparatively few children whose CD4 cells failed to rebound did not appear to be at any greater risk for serious infection than children with higher CD4 counts,” study author Rohan Hazra, MD, chief of the maternal and pediatric infectious disease branch at the National Institutes of Health’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, said in a press release.

To read the NIH press release, click here.

To read the study abstract, click here.