How about the quality and recommendation on prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of HIV/AIDS guidelines developed by WHO: A protocol for systematic review

Abstract

Background: Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) has become a pandemic that has infected millions of people around the world and brings a tremendous economic burden. There are numerous guidelines for prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of HIV/AIDS published in recent years, but the quality of these guidelines is still unknown. Therefore, we conducted this study to evaluate the quality of prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of HIV/AIDS published by World Health Organization (WHO) as well as perform a comparison of recommendations between those guidelines. And we also hope our finding could provide suggestions to enhance the quality of future guidelines in this area. Methods:We obtained guidelines from WHO Guidelines approved by the Guidelines Review Committee (GRC). Two reviewers will independently select eligible guidelines. The quality of included guidelines will be appraised by at least four reviewers through AGREE II and RIGHT tools. The results will be checked for discrepancies. Differences between them than two reviewers will be considered as discrepant and the final discrepancies will be resolved by consensus. The results will be presented in tables and the descriptive statistics will be calculated for all domains of the AGREE II instrument as standard score and median (range) as the reporting quality result of eligible guidelines will also be evaluated through RIGHT criteria. In this study, we will also compare the differences and similarities of recommendations among different guidelines. Results: The results of this study will increase the knowledge about the development of recommendations guidelines for HIV/AIDS of high methodological rigor and reporting quality. This study may also identify potential limitations for future research in this area. Conclusion: This study may guide health professionals, policy makers, and health policy managers in choosing the guidelines for recommendation to better to achieve the 90-90-90 targets. INPLASY registration number: INPLASY2020110010 Abbreviations: AGREE II = Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation II, AIDS = Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, ART = antiretroviral therapy, GRADE = Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation, GRC = Guidelines Review Committee, HIV = Human Immunodeficiency Virus, PEP = post-exposure prophylaxis, PLWHA = people living with HIV/AIDS, PrEP = pre-exposure prophylaxis, PRISMA-P = Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta- Analyses, RIGHT = Reporting Items for Practice Guidelines in healthcare, UNAIDS = the Joint United Nations Programme on AIDS, WHO = World Health Organization.