Background Human Immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection incidence is increasing in Indonesia.CD45RO+ cells are hyper-responsive cells that mediate immunological memory and HIV tends to infect RO+ memory subset of CD4 T cells. CD4+CD45RO+ T cells are major latent virus reservoir in HIV infection. However, up to now, there is no report of this reservoir cells in Indonesian HIV patients at various disease stages.

Theaim of this study isto know the relationship between the CD4+CD45RO+ T cells with clinical HIV stage in a hospital-based study.

Method This observational cross-sectional study was conducted in 48 HIV patients (35 males; 13 females) with various stages of diseases in HIV clinics of Sardjito Hospital, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The clinical HIV stages of infections weredetermined while the CD4 counts and CD45RO expressions were detected from peripheral blood cells using flow cytometer. The differences of CD4+CD45RO+ T cells percentages among patient clinical stages and itscorrelations with CD4 counts were analysed using ANOVA and Pearson Correlation tests.

Result Clinically the most dominant stage was stage 3 (n = 15; 31.3%). The Late stage HIV infection (stage 3 and 4) has significantly higher CD4+CD45RO+ T cells percentages than stage 1 and 2 (p = 0.006). The CD4+CD45RO+ cells percentages positivelycorrelatedwith clinical HIVstage (r = 0.46; p < 0.05) but negatively correlated with CD4 cells absolute count (r = –0.55; p = 0.001)

Conclusion T cells expressing CD4+RO+were higher in late stage of HIV infection and negatively correlated with CD4 T cells absolute count.