Dear doctor, Thank you for answering my previous post.

Likewise, as a considerable amount of cd4 cells are situated in the guts and other tissues/organs, is the measurement of cd4 concentration in the blood a good indicator/reference of a person's immunity or level of bodily damage by the HIV viruses? Is there any kind of HIV strains which primarily attack the mucosal cd4 cells in the guts or oral mucosal surface, depleting the cd4 cells confined in the mucosal tissues? What I'm confused is that when we measure our cd4 counts in the blood plasma, is that the measured count of the plasma cd4 doesn't necessarily reflect the degree of depletion and so the degree of immunity damage in the guts/mucosal tissues? Regards

No, the CD4 count in blood is a good reflection of what is going on in other tissues. Again, it is not perfect, and we can't establish a one-to-one relationship between CD4 count in blood and CD4 counts in other tissues. As far as we know, there is no preferential viral strain that attacks the gut.