Thalidomide is Associated With Increased T Cell Activation and Inflammation in Antiretroviral-naive HIV-infected Individuals in a Randomised Clinical Trial of Efficacy and Safety

Short-term use of thalidomide led to an intense transient increase in T cell activation and inflammation, with a decrease in the CD4+ cell count without changes to the CD8+ cell count. We confirmed that thalidomide acts in vitro as a latency reversal agent and speculate that the in vivo results obtained were due to an increase in HIV replication.