Salminen 1988.

Methods	Study design: 2‐group parallel RCT Duration of the study: not reported; follow‐up until 6 weeks after completion of treatment Country: Finland
Participants	Participants with the diagnosis of cervix or uterus carcinoma were included in this study Age: 40 to 75 years Sex: female
Interventions	Intervention (n = 11): both dietary counselling and a daily dose of ≥ 2 × 10⁹ live Lactobacillus acidophilus bacteria in the form of a yogurt‐type product 150 mL of the product daily for 5 days before radiotherapy, daily throughout the radiotherapy period including the interval, and then for 10 days after completion of the therapy regimen Control (n = 10): dietary counselling only Sum of internal and external radiation was 8000 cGy for the tumour and 5000 cGy for the pelvic area
Outcomes	Frequency and severity of radiotherapy‐induced diarrhoea, intestinal side effects
Notes
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Randomised study, yet method of randomisation not described
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Method of allocation not described
Blinding of participants and personnel (performance bias) All outcomes	High risk	No information on blinding: probably not performed
Blinding of outcome assessment (detection bias) Subjective outcomes	High risk	No information on blinding: probably not performed. High risk of detection bias for subjective outcomes
Blinding of outcome assessment (detection bias) Objective outcomes	Low risk	No information; however it is unlikely that assessment of objective outcomes (mortality) would have been influenced
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) Subjective outcomes	Unclear risk	Two participants were excluded from the control group because of changes in the radiotherapy regimen. One participant from the test group was excluded because she had no pause during radiotherapy. All other participants in the test group tolerated the yogurt treatment well and completed the prescribed treatment regimen Owing to the relatively large numbers of dropouts in this small study, we scored 'unclear'
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) Objective outcomes	Unclear risk	Owing to the relatively large numbers of dropouts in this small study, we scored 'unclear'
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	Unclear risk	Study was published in 1988, and no study protocol is available. Yet, all outcomes prespecified in the methods section were reported in the results section
Other bias	Unclear risk	No baseline characteristics are reported in Table 1. As treatment groups are small, baseline differences could have been present by chance