Table 4.

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

		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
1	Acute	RCT	Single study of high quality	-	Non-malnourished infants and young children (≤24m) with acute diarrhea in LMICs	Low	-	-	0.75 [0.22, 1.28]
1	Persistent	RCT	Single study of moderate quality	-	Malnourished weaned infants and young children (≤36m) with persistent diarrhea in LMICs	Low	-	-	0.28 [-0.35, 0.90]
OUTCOME: STOOL OUTPUT									Standardized Mean Difference
1	Acute	RCT	Single study of high quality	-	Non-malnourished infants and young children (≤24m) with acute diarrhea in LMICs	Low	-	-	0.62 [0.09, 1.14]
2	Persistent	RCT	Only two studies, both of moderate quality	Heterogeneous (I2= 50%)	Malnourished weaned infants and young children (≤36m) with persistent diarrhea in LMICs	Low	-	-	0.22 [-0.33, 0.78]
OUTCOME: WEIGHT GAIN									Standardized Mean Difference
1	Acute	RCT	Single study of high quality	-	Non-malnourished infants and young children (≤24m) with acute diarrhea in LMICs	Low	-	-	0.21 [-0.31, 0.72]
2	Persistent	RCT	Only two studies, both of moderate quality	Heterogeneous (I2= 94%)	Malnourished weaned infants and young children (≤36m) with persistent diarrhea in LMICs	Low	-	-	-0.35 [-2.00, 1.31]
OUTCOME: TREATMENT FAILURE									Risk Ratio
2	Acute	RCT	Only two studies, ranging from moderate to high quality	Heterogeneous (I2= 60%)	Non-malnourished infants and young children (≤24m) with acute diarrhea in LMICs	Low	7	3	1.79 [0.15, 20.66]
2	Persistent	RCT	Only two studies, both of moderate quality	Heterogeneous (I2= 72%)	Malnourished weaned infants and young children (≤36m) with persistent diarrhea in LMICs	Low	6	7	1.25 [0.07, 23.66]