Selenium Effects on HIV UNA and CD4 Cell Counts

摘要

Hurwitz et al report that selenium supplementation resulted in increased CD4 T-lympho-cyte cell counts and reduced HIV RNA levels. We believe that several issues need to be considered before reaching this conclusion. First, human CD4 cell counts are not distributed normally in the population; thus, a better measurement of treatment response is to examine the change in either CD4 cell percentage or the square root of the CD4 cell count.2 Because the CD4 cell count in selenium responders increased by only approximately 6.7%, it is unlikely that this reflects a biologically significant difference or that the CD4 cell percentage or the square root of CD4 cell counts changed significantly.