Item	Authors’ judgement	Support for judgement
Adequate sequence generation?	Yes	Quote (from the report): “the randomly divided into two groups”.
		Quote (from phone interview): numbers generated through a random table
Allocation concealment?	Yes	Concealed envelopes with random numbers were used.
Blinding?	Yes	From phone interview: participants were blinded with the use of a placebo and provided with the same diet & lifestyle advice as the treatment group; clinicians were blinded also; not known if the assessors were blinded.
Incomplete outcome data addressed?	Yes	No missing participants or withdrawals.
Free of selective reporting?	Unclear	No protocol provided but all nominated outcomes reported, reported TCM patterns and symptoms also.
Free of other bias?	Yes	None identified.