Risk-Based Screening Tools to Optimise HIV Testing Services: a Systematic Review

AbstractPurpose of reviewEffective ways to diagnose the remaining people living with HIV who do not know their status are a global priority. We reviewed the use of risk-based tools, a set of criteria to identify individuals who would not otherwise be tested (screen in) or excluded people from testing (screen out).Recent findingsRecent studies suggest that there may be value in risk-based tools to improve testing efficiency (i.e. identifying those who need to be tested). However, there has not been any systematic reviews to synthesize these studies.SummaryWe identified 18,238 citations, and 71 were included. The risk-based tools identified were most commonly from high-income (51%) and low HIV (<5%) prevalence countries (73%). The majority were for “screening in” (70%), with the highest performance tools related to identifying MSM with acute HIV. Screening in tools may be helpful in settings where it is not feasible or recommended to offer testing routinely. Caution is needed for screening out tools, where there is a trade-off between redu cing costs of testing with missing cases of people living with HIV.
Source: Current HIV/AIDS Reports - Category: Infectious Diseases Source Type: research