. 2013 Sep 17;13(Suppl 3):S17. doi: 10.1186/1471-2458-13-S3-S17

Table 3.

Quality assessment of studies on lactose-free versus lactose-containing liquid feeds

		QUALITY ASSESSMENT					SUMMARY OF FINDINGS
Number of studies	Diarrhea mode	Design	Limitations	Consistency	Generalizability to population of interest	Overall quality of evidence	Number of events in intervention group	Number of events in control group	Effect size (95% CI)

OUTCOME: DURATION OF DIARRHEA									Standardized Mean Difference

5	Acute	RCT	Study quality ranges from moderate to high	Heterogeneous (I²= 60%)	Infants and young children (≤24m) with acute diarrhea, without severe malnutrition, in LMICs	Moderate	-	-	-0.36 [-0.62, -0.10]
0	Persistent	RCT	No studies	-	-	-	-	-	-

OUTCOME: STOOL OUTPUT									Standardized Mean Difference

3	Acute	RCT	Study quality ranges from moderate to high	Heterogeneous (I²= 76%)	Infants and young children (≤24m) with acute diarrhea, without severe malnutrition, in LMICs	Moderate	-	-	-0.26 [-0.80, 0.28]
0	Persistent	RCT	No studies	-	-	-	-	-	-

OUTCOME: WEIGHT GAIN									Standardized Mean Difference

3	Acute	RCT	Study quality ranges from moderate to high	Heterogeneous (I²= 41%)	Infants and young children (≤24m) with acute diarrhea, not severely malnourished, in LMICs	Moderate	-	-	0.05 [-0.22, 0.33]
1	Persistent	RCT	Single study of low quality	-	Infants and young children (≤22m) with persistent diarrhea, not dehydrated or severely malnourished, in LMICs	Very low	-	-	0.90 (0.07, 1.73)

OUTCOME: TREATMENT FAILURE									Risk Ratio

7	Acute	RCT	Study quality ranges from low to high	Consistent (I²= 0%)	Infants and young children (≤24m) with acute diarrhea, not severely malnourished, in LMICs	Moderate	50	57	0.53 [0.40, 0.70]
2	Persistent	RCT	Only two studies, of low and high quality	Consistent (I²= 0%)	Infants and young children (≤36m) with persistent diarrhea, not severely malnourished, in LMICs	Low	4	11	0.17 [0.06, 0.48]