Following the 2011 release of technical guidance from the World Health Organization (WHO) and Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) on the use of HIV recency, the field changed substantially. When Facente Consulting was hired to support revision of the technical guidance in 2019, many of the assays described in the 2011 guidance were no longer available or had been largely displaced by newer technologies. In addition, numerous challenges had been identified in the analysis of recency within population-level surveys, including the impact of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, on assay results.
To revise the technical guidance in accordance with the most updated knowledge, Facente Consulting led a team of subject matter experts to review the available evidence and draft a revised document for WHO and UNAIDS. This process entailed a large systematic review, which was published in a peer-reviewed journal, as well as planning and facilitating a large international meeting to present the draft guidance and solicit feedback from global experts before the guidance was finalized. The revised guidance outlines recommendations and best practices regarding the appropriate use of HIV recency assays within public health surveillance programs and large population surveys.