Table 4. Newcastle–Ottawa Quality Assessment Scale scores for bias in studies included in systematic review of cotrimoxazole’s effect on mortality and morbidity in adults with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) .
| First author, year | Sources of bias |
Total scorea | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Selection bias |
Confounding bias |
Measurement bias |
|||||||||
| Cohort on cotrimoxazole and ART was representative of the average adult on this treatment in the communityb | Cohort receiving ART alone was representative of the cohort on both cotrimoxazole and ARTb | Cotrimoxazole use was ascertainedb | Majority of participants were known to be asymptomatic at study baselineb | Mortality estimates were adjusted for baseline CD4 cell countc | Deaths were validatedb | Median or mean follow-up of at least 3 monthsb | ≤ 20% of participants were lost to follow-upb | ||||
| Walker, 201028 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 8 | ||
| Hoffmann, 201029 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 8 | ||
| Lowrance, 200730 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 7 | ||
| Madec, 200731 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 6 | ||
| Fairall, 200832 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 6 | ||
| Van Oosterhout, 201033 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 6 | ||
| Alemu, 201034 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 5 | ||
| Miiro, 200935 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 5 | ||
| Campbell, 200936 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 6 | ||
CD4 cell, CD4+ T lymphocyte.
a A score of 7 to 9 indicates high methodological quality, a score of 4 to 6 indicates moderate quality and a score of 0 to 3 indicates low quality.
b Yes = 1 point; No = 0 points.
c Yes = 2 points; No = 0 points.