Characteristics of the cohorts studied.

Data are mean±SEM with limits in brackets. NA, not applicable. #p<0.05 in comparison with HIV-2 infected patients; *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001 in comparison with healthy individuals. an = 17; bn = 16; cn = 21; d4 out of 22 HIV-1 patients and 20 out of 28 HIV-2 patients had undetectable viremia. In these cases, the cut-off value of the test (40 and 200 RNA copies/ml for HIV-1 and HIV-2, respectively) was used to calculate the mean; eProviral DNA was quantified in 21 HIV-1 and 28 HIV-2 infected patients. It was detectable in all the patients evaluated but in 3 cases from the HIV-2 cohort it was below the cut-off value of the test (5 HIV DNA copies/106 PBMC copies). In these cases, the cut-off value of the test was used to calculate the mean.