Shah 2002.

Methods	Design: randomised controlled trial Randomisation: individual Trial: daily oral iron versus weekly iron versus control. Weekly iron group not extracted Date of study: 1998 to 1999
Participants	Setting: government girls' school in Dharan, Nepal, an urban foothill town 305 m above sea level Malaria endemicity: not stated Included: healthy adolescent girls attending a girls' school, matched for age, anthropometry and demography. Age range 11 years to 18 years (mean age 15 years) Excluded: any chronic illnesses (e.g. asthma, rheumatic heart disease), receiving any long‐term allopathic or indigenous drug treatments, those with recent hospitalisation Dropouts: 6 of 148; 4 iron, 2 control Sample size: total: 142; intervention: 70, control: 72
Interventions	Intervention: 350 mg of ferrous sulphate and 1.5 mg of folic acid once a day for 90 to 100 days Control: no intervention Duration: 14 weeks
Outcomes	Haematocrit, anaemia
Notes	Compliance: not stated Conflicts of interest: not stated Funded by: the Research Committee of B.P. Koirala Institute of Health Sciences, Dharan
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Sequence generation not described in study
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Allocation concealment method not described in study
Blinding of participants and personnel (performance bias) All outcomes	High risk	No placebo in control arm
Blinding of outcome assessment (detection bias) All outcomes	High risk	No placebo in control arm
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Low risk	Attrition: 4 iron, 2 control
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	Low risk	Not evident
Other bias	Low risk	The study appears to be free of other source of bias