Li 2000

Methods	Study design: parallel RCT Losses to follow‐up/withdrawals: None
Participants	Setting: inpatients recruited from the paediatric department Country: China Ethnicity: Chinese Nephrotic syndrome involving patients with new onset and relapse; not specifying primary or secondary types, diagnosed on "the National Diagnostic Criteria for Nephrotic Syndrome in Children" Course of disease: new‐onset patients (5 days to 5 months); relapsing patients (2.5 months to 4 years) Number: 60 children Age range: 1 to 13 years Gender (M/F): 48/12 Exclusion criteria: NS
Interventions	Treatment group Chinese medicinal herbs (oral) "TIAOJINING" Dose: 1.5 bag/time (< 5 years); 2 bags/time (5 to 9 years); 3 bags/time (> 9 years), 3 times/day (one bag = 15 g) Baseline treatment including the standard steroid protocol for nephrotic children and other supportive therapies such as complements of calcium, potassium Duration: 8 weeks Control group Baseline treatment including the standard steroid protocol for nephrotic children and other supportive therapies such as complements of calcium, potassium Duration of follow‐up: NS
Outcomes	Infection Diagnostic criteria: based on the authors' definition involving clinical symptoms, signs and general tests for blood, urine, stool and chest X‐ray Adverse events
Notes	Spectrum of infections in order of incidence (episodes of infection) Treatment group: URI (15); acute enteritis (2); purulent tonsillitis (1); bronchitis (1); pneumonia (1) Control group: URI (31); acute enteritis (7); bronchitis (5); UTI (4); pneumonia (2); varicella (2); acute dysentery (1); skin infection (1) Spectrum of microorganisms: NS Source of funding: NS
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Unclear risk	The study did not provide the information on the method of random sequence generation, and only presented with the data as "all participants with nephrotic syndrome were randomly allocated to treatment and control groups".
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Unclear risk	The study did not provide the information on allocation concealment.
Blinding (performance bias and detection bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	The study did not provide the information on blinding.
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Low risk	There were no missing data in this study.
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	High risk	Free of selective reporting bias was assessed as "No" due to some clinically important outcomes unstated, such as adverse events.
Other bias	Unclear risk	There was insufficient information to make judgement.