Table 3.

Reasons for exclusion of reports identified in the initial screening process as potentially relevant

Reason for exclusion	Number of Reports
Diarrhoea status of participants
Included children with acute diarrhoea only	9
Wrong definition of persistent diarrhoea	2
Asymptomatic children only	1
Included all children in a community, whether or not they had diarrhoea	2
No separate analysis for cases of acute and persistent diarrhoea	41
Other participant characteristics
Participants were of the wrong age range	8
Participants resided in a high income country	3
Study design factors
Less than 30 participants	5
Faecal samples taken in the acute stage (before day 14) of the persistent episode	5
Tested for one organism only	4
Sampled only children who had been in close contact with Shigella dysentery	1
Reviewed hospital records only for children found positive for enteric pathogens	1
Not relevant
No data on frequency of pathogens presented	5