Members of the Guideline Writing Group declared their conflicts of interests prior to the commencement of the writing process, and if a vote was necessary any member whose declared interests made this inappropriate did not participate. BHIVA hepatitis coinfection guidelines for hepatitis B and C were last published in 2010 [4]. For the 2013 guidelines the literature search dates were 1 January 2009 to 30 October 2012, and included Medline, Embase and the

Cochrane library. Abstracts from selected conferences (see Appendix 2) were searched between 1 January 2009 and 30 October 2012. For each topic and health care question, evidence was identified and evaluated by Guideline Writing Group members with expertise in that field. Using the modified GRADE system (Appendix 1), panel members were responsible for assessing and grading the quality of selleckchem evidence for predefined outcomes across studies and developing and grading the strength of recommendations. An important aspect of evaluating evidence is an understanding of the design and analysis of clinical trials including the use of surrogate marker data. For a number of questions, GRADE evidence profile and summary of findings tables were constructed using predefined and rated treatment outcomes (Appendix SCH772984 solubility dmso 2) to achieve consensus for key recommendations and aid transparency of process. Prior to final approval by the Writing

Group the guidelines were published online for public consultation and PFKL external peer review commissioned. BHIVA views the involvement of patient and community representatives in the guideline development process as essential. The Writing Group included one patient representative who was involved in all aspects of the guideline development process and was responsible for liaising with all interested patient groups. The GRADE Working Group [3] has developed an approach to grading evidence that moves from initial reliance

on study design to consider the overall quality of evidence across outcomes. BHIVA has adopted the modified GRADE system for the Association’s guideline development. The advantages of the modified GRADE system are: (i) the grading system provides an informative, transparent summary for clinicians, patients and policy makers by combining an explicit evaluation of the strength of the recommendation with a judgement of the quality of the evidence for each recommendation; (ii) the two-level grading system of recommendations has the merit of simplicity and provides clear direction to patients, clinicians and policy makers. A Grade 1 recommendation is a strong recommendation to do (or not do) something, where benefits clearly outweigh risks (or vice versa) for most, if not all, patients. Most clinicians and patients would want to follow a strong recommendation unless there is a clear rationale for an alternative approach. A strong recommendation usually starts with the standard wording ‘We recommend’.