Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: Dec 18, 2025
Open Peer Review Period: Dec 19, 2025 - Feb 13, 2026
Date Accepted: Apr 1, 2026
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Prediction model for frailty in people living with HIV: a protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis
ABSTRACT
Background:
With the advent of antiretroviral therapy, the life expectancy of people living with HIV (PLWH) has increased significantly, leading to a growing prevalence of frailty and its associated adverse outcomes. However, frailty prediction models developed for the general older population may not apply to PLWH due to their distinct immunologic, inflammatory, and comorbidity profiles. To date, a systematic evaluation of existing frailty prediction models specifically for PLWH is lacking.
Objective:
Ethical approval has been granted by the Ethics Committee of Beijing Ditan Hospital, Capital Medical University (DTEC-KY2025-088-01). Findings from this study will be disseminated through publication in peer-reviewed academic journals.
Methods:
With the advent of antiretroviral therapy, the life expectancy of people living with HIV (PLWH) has increased significantly, leading to a growing prevalence of frailty and its associated adverse outcomes. However, frailty prediction models developed for the general older population may not apply to PLWH due to their distinct immunologic, inflammatory, and comorbidity profiles. To date, a systematic evaluation of existing frailty prediction models specifically for PLWH is lacking.
Results:
Ethical approval has been granted by the Ethics Committee of Beijing Ditan Hospital, Capital Medical University (DTEC-KY2025-088-01). Findings from this study will be disseminated through publication in peer-reviewed academic journals.
Conclusions:
Research will be located by searching electronic databases, including PubMed, CINAHL, Web of Science, and Embase. Two independent reviewers will conduct the screening of titles and abstracts, evaluate full texts, and extract data. The extraction process will adhere to the CHARMS checklist and the TRIPOD statement. A systematic evaluation of the included studies will be performed to assess their risk of bias and applicability, utilizing the PROBAST tool. If appropriate, meta-analyses will be employed to synthesize quantitative data related to the predictive performance of these models. Clinical Trial: PROSPERO registration number CRD 1076202
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.