Assessing the performance of international pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) eligibility guidelines in a cohort of Chinese MSM, Beijing, China 2009 to 2016.

The performance of international indication guidelines in this sample was only slightly better than random allocation. Using such guidelines to screen out MSM self-identifying as interested in PrEP could lead to misallocation of resources and to good candidates for PrEP being denied access. For settings in which international guidelines perform poorly, alternative indication approaches should be considered.