Item	Authors’ judgement	Support for judgement
Adequate sequence generation?	Yes	Quote from phone call: “numbers randomisation from random table”
Allocation concealment?	Unclear	Phone call: Participants did not know the group to which they were to be allocated.
		No information provided about whether researchers knew the allocation.
Blinding?	No	No blinding of participants, intervention provider or outcomes assessor.
Incomplete outcome data addressed?	Yes	All participants are reported. Six withdrawals are explained. One participant left the intervention as they did not want to take the decoction, the other withdrawal did not give a reason. There were four withdrawals from the control where contact was lost.
Free of selective reporting?	Unclear	No protocol provided but all nominated and expected outcomes are reported.
Free of other bias?	Yes	None identified.