Effect of Traditional Chinese Medicine Therapy on the Trend in CD4⁺ T-Cell Counts among Patients with HIV/AIDS Treated with Antiretroviral Therapy: A Retrospective Cohort Study

Table 1

Baseline demographic characteristics of the patients with HIV/AIDS in the study cohort.

Variables	All (N = 1028)	TCM + cART (N = 307)	cART (N = 721)	P
Gender				0.634
Male	509 (49.5%)	151 (49.2%)	368 (51.0%)
Female	519 (50.5%)	156(50.8%)	353 (49.0%)
Age (years) (SD)	40.3 (8.09)	40.8 (8.39)	40.0 (7.96)	0.196
<40 years	573 (55.7%)	167 (54.4%)	406 (56.3%)	0.619
≥40 years	455 (44.3%)	140(45.6%)	315 (43.7%)
Marital status				0.751
Married	815 (79.3%)	241(78.5%)	574 (79.6%)
Single/widow	213 (20.7%)	66 (21.5%)	147 (20.4%)
Occupation				1.000
Farmer	1023 (99.5%)	306 (99.7%)	717 (99.4%)
Others	5 (0.49%)	1 (0.33%)	4 (0.55%)
Education level				0.383
<6 years	297 (28.9%)	95 (30.9%)	202 (28.0%)
≥6 years	731 (71.1%)	212 (69.1%)	519 (72.0%)
Route of infection				0.605
Plasma	995 (96.8%)	298 (97.1%)	697 (96.7%)
Sex	16 (1.56%)	3 (0.98%)	13 (1.80%)
Others	17 (1.65%)	6 (1.95%)	11 (1.53%)
CD4^+ T-cell count (cells/mL)			<0.001
<200	256 (24.9%)	50 (16.3%)	206 (28.6%)
200–350	318 (30.9%)	94 (30.6%)	224 (31.1%)
350–500	250 (24.3%)	84 (27.4%)	166 (23.0%)
>500	204 (19.8%)	79 (25.7%)	125 (17.3%)
Death				0.247
No	743 (72.3%)	230 (74.9%)	513 (71.2%)
Yes	285 (27.7%)	77 (25.1%)	208 (28.8%)