Zhang 2000

Methods	Study design: parallel RCT Losses to follow‐up/withdrawals: None
Participants	Setting: inpatients recruited from the paediatric department of general hospital Country: China Ethnicity: Chinese Primary nephrotic syndrome diagnosed on "the National Diagnostic Criteria for Nephrotic Syndrome in Children". Course of disease: NS Number: 40 children Age range: 2 to 12 years Gender (M/F): 24/16 Exclusion criteria: NS
Interventions	Treatment group Intervention: thymosin (mainly thymosin‐α1) Dose: 5 mg/d (2 to 4 years); 10 mg/d (4 to 7 years); 20 mg/d (7 to 10 years) added to 5% glucose 50 to 100 mL intravenously for 2 weeks, then every other day intramuscularly for 3 weeks, then once a week intramuscularly. Total duration: 2 months Baseline treatment including the standard steroid protocol for nephrotic children Control group Baseline treatment including the standard steroid protocol for nephrotic children 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 Immunological function was measured using APAAP
Notes	Spectrum of infection in order of incidence (number of patients) Treatment group: URI (4); UTI (2); pneumonia (1) Control group: URI (7); UTI (3); pneumonia (2); skin infection (1); peritonitis (1) Spectrum of microorganisms: one E. coli was cultured in UTI 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	Unclear 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 effects of thymosin.
Other bias	Unclear risk	There was insufficient information to make judgement.

BCG ‐ Bacillus Calmette‐Guerin; IVIG ‐ intravenous immunoglobulin; NA ‐ not associated; NS ‐ not stated; URI ‐ upper respiratory infection; UTI ‐ urinary tract infection