Background
During the course of HIV-1 infection, the status of immune activation is associated with disease progression. The immune system has adopted self-regulatory mechanisms to counterbalance undesirable immune activation. Regulatory T cells (TReg) expressing FoxP3 and CD4+ T cells expressing IL-17 (TH17) play an important role in this phenomenon. We hypothesized that a have couterbalance of TH17 and TReg cells is found in subjects progressing to immunodeficiency.