Study	Reason for exclusion
Anonymous 1971	Not a randomised clinical trial
Anonymous 2006	Not a randomised clinical trial
Assy 2005	Not a randomised clinical trial
Bajaj 2012	Not a randomised clinical trial
Bendtsen 2005	Not a randomised clinical trial
Boccardi 1974	Not a randomised clinical trial
Bode 1997	Not all participants had liver cirrhosis.
Gerbes 1997	Not a randomised clinical trial
Gines 1998	Not a randomised clinical trial
Gupta 2013	Not all participants had decompensated liver cirrhosis.
Henrion 1992	Not a randomised clinical trial
Jalan 2010	Not a randomised clinical trial
Kemp 2009	Cross‐over trial with short duration of treatment with no information on the outcomes prior to cross‐over.
Kumar 2014	Participants received a drug that is known to affect immune system; therefore, the effect estimates obtained were not relevant to the research question.
Lata 2005	Short‐term antibiotics for upper gastrointestinal bleeding
Novella 1997	Comparison of 2 different regimens of the same drug
Pateron 1992	Short‐term antibiotics for upper gastrointestinal bleeding
Rimola 1985	Short‐term antibiotics for upper gastrointestinal bleeding
Schubert 1991	Not a randomised clinical trial
Siddique 2010	Not a randomised clinical trial
Vibert 2008	Not a randomised clinical trial