Simon 2003.

Methods	Double‐blinded 3‐arm pilot RCT. Start and end dates not stated
Participants	45 children (aged 2 to 18) with symptoms of infectious mononucleosis for 1 week or less. Clinic setting. 25 male participants and 20 female participants included
Interventions	1. Valacyclovir 20 mg/kg tds for 14 days and placebo A OD for 5 days 2. Valacyclovir 20 mg/kg tds for 14 days plus prednisolone 1 mg/kg/day for 5 days 3. Placebo B tds for 14 days plus placebo A OD for 5 days
Outcomes	Sore throat, stomach ache, fatigue, swollen glands, headache, vomiting, rash, loss of appetite, nausea, sweats, chills, swollen eyes, runny nose, cough, and feeling bad were scored as either absent (0), mild (1), moderate (2), or severe (3)
Notes
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Unclear risk	"An independent pharmacy was in charge of random group assignment, medicine dispersement, and dosing". Unclear how randomisation was performed
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Low risk	"An independent pharmacy was in charge of random group assignment, medicine dispersement, and dosing"
Blinding of participants and personnel (performance bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	States "double blind" but does not elaborate further
Blinding of outcome assessment (detection bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	States "double blind" but does not elaborate further
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	"Patients that did not complete the study or had a missing result on day 20 had their last observation carried forward to day 20 prior to any analysis". Incomplete data in 1 of the results tables
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	High risk	Individual symptom scores were not all reported, but reported as composite scores: "selected score", "feeling bad score", "fatigue score" and "total score"
Other bias	High risk	Study funding source and conflicts of interest not stated. However, 2 authors were from a drug company.