Kruger 1996

Methods	RCT Length of follow‐up: 11 months
Participants	All children living in endemic area Number analysed for primary outcome: 74 Age range: 6 to 8 years Inclusion criteria: 65 pupils in first year of school randomly selected from each of 5 primary schools; schools included in a feeding scheme Exclusion criteria: age > 9 years; current use of iron supplements; inclusion in an iron fortification trial; infection (raised white cell count)
Interventions	Multiple doses vs placebo Albendazole: 2 x 200 mg repeated at 4 months, daily unfortified soup; Placebo: daily unfortified soup. Also: whole population 3/5 schools also allocated soup fortified with 20 mg elemental iron per day, and 100 mg vitamin C for 6 months; unclear whether this intervention was cluster randomized. All schools taking part in feeding programme providing bread, soup, and peanut butter to all pupils.
Outcomes	Mean change in weight post‐treatment; Mean change in height post‐treatment; Mean change in haemoglobin post‐treatment; School attendance. Not included in review: other iron indices; stool egg counts (Visser filter method); z‐scores for weight‐for‐age, height for age, and weight‐for‐height.
Notes	Location: South Africa Community category: 3 In the Dickson 2000a Cochrane Review, the data were combined irrespective of the possible confounding effects of iron allocation; data extracted for albendazole‐iron placebo vs placebo‐placebo groups only for this review. Data stratified by baseline iron stores into 2 groups that were combined for meta‐analysis. Source of funding: Fortified and unfortified soup provided by Funa Foods, Zentel and placebo provided by SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals (Pty) Ltd.
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Unclear risk	"Randomly assigned", no further details provided.
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Unclear risk	No details reported.
Blinding (performance bias and detection bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	No details reported.
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	High risk	72% (179/247) of randomized participants were evaluated. Reasons for loss to follow‐up not reported. Inclusion of all randomized participants (number evaluable/number randomized): 72% (179/247).
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	Low risk	All stated outcomes reported.
Other bias	Low risk	No obvious other source of bias.