| Methods |
Double‐blinded RCT |
| Participants |
67 people aged 14 years or older with fewer than 15 days of productive cough (in the absence of clinical pneumonitis). Excluded if could not produce sputum specimen for Gram stain. Dropouts = 13/67 |
| Interventions |
Trimethoprim‐sulfamethoxazole (160/800) twice daily for 7 days versus identical‐appearing placebo. Participants kept daily symptom logs. No follow‐up visit |
| Outcomes |
Cough, night cough, sputum production, general well‐being, fever, work disability, use of adjunctive medications, and side effects |
| Notes |
No mention of per cent of eligible patients who refused enrolment |
| Risk of bias |
| Bias |
Authors' judgement |
Support for judgement |
| Random sequence generation (selection bias) |
Unclear risk |
Not reported |
| Allocation concealment (selection bias) |
Low risk |
|
| Blinding (performance bias and detection bias)
All outcomes |
Low risk |
|
| Blinding (performance bias and detection bias) |
Low risk |
|
| Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias)
All outcomes |
Low risk |
|
| Selective reporting (reporting bias) |
Unclear risk |
Not reported |
| Other bias |
Low risk |
|
