Table 2.

Symptom severity on day 2–4 according to antibiotic prescription strategy

Antibiotic prescribing strategy	Symptom severity, mean (SD)	Difference (95% CI), P-value	Difference controlling for clustering and, antibiotic type and baseline severity score (95% CI), P-value	Difference controlling for propensity score (95% CI), P-value	Difference controlling for propensity score in the imputed dataset (95% CI), P-value
None (reference) n= 585	2.13 (1.24)
Immediate n= 723	2.03 (1.20)	−0.10 (−0.23 to 0.03), P = 0.140	−0.30 (−0.49 to −0.21), P = 0.001	−0.22 (0.44 to −0.01), P = 0.040	−0.22 (−0.43 to −0.01), P = 0.043
Delayed n= 196	1.95 (1.19)	−0.17 (−0.37 to 0.02), P = 0.834	−0.22 (−0.42 to −0.02), P = 0.034	−0.26 (−0.45 to −0.7), P = 0.009	−0.26 (−0.45 to −0.07), P = 0.008

SD = standard deviation.