Kerani 2011.

Methods	Setting: Public Health‐Seattle & King County (PHSKC), Washington State, US Enrolment: men who had sex with men who were given a diagnosis of gonorrhoea or chlamydia or both were enrolled at the time they were contacted to provide them with partner services between 1 July 2007 and 31 March 2009 Follow‐up: index patients completed a follow‐up interview approximately 2 weeks after enrolment
Participants	75 men with gonorrhoea or chlamydia or both were randomised Inclusion criteria Men who had sex with men Diagnosis of chlamydia or gonorrhoea or both Exclusion criteria Less than 18 years of age Not able to speak English If reported that all partners treated Not sexually active with another man in the 60 days prior to diagnosis If case report was received more than 2 weeks after patient's treatment If patient was diagnosed with HIV or syphilis in the 90 days before diagnosis with gonorrhoea or chlamydia
Interventions	Simple patient referral (n = 18) Index patients notify partners themselves Enhanced patient referral (n = 17) Index patient used inSPOT (inspot.org), an Internet‐based PN service. Index patients received a printed card with the site's Internet address or telephonic instructions if not present in STI clinic EPT (n = 16) Index patient received prepackaged medicine to give to 3 different partners. The package also included information on STI, importance of HIV testing, allergy warning to medication, condoms and a free visit to STI clinic. If not present in STI clinic, index patient was telephoned and informed to pick up similar packages at several local pharmacies Combination of EPT and enhanced patient referral (n = 24) Index patient received EPT and inSPOT
Outcomes	Primary outcome Number of partners notified (data recorded by contract tracer from index patient or clinical records) Number of partners treated (data recorded by contract tracer from index patient or clinical records) Secondary outcome Method (telephone or in person) of PN used (self report index patient) Partner tested for HIV/syphilis (self report index patient) Adverse events (passive surveillance)
Notes	Ethical approval was received from University of Washington Institutional Review Board. Authors were contacted to clarify type of allocation concealment and whether protocol was available. Exact numbers of partners treated and notified per intervention arm were also requested and the type of adverse events. Authors failed to provide any of the above
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Unclear risk	A computer was used to randomly assign participants ‐ no details given how this was performed
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Not stated
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	High risk	Only 53/75 (70.6%) participants completed the study. Only participants completing the study were included in the analysis
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	Low risk	Primary outcomes reported in methods section were reported in results section. The protocol was not available from 3 trial registries
Other bias	Unclear risk	Baseline imbalances (race, type of STI) evident but insufficient to assess whether an important risk of bias existed. Early stopping due to low recruitment rate are not more likely to show extreme results and not considered to be prone to bias
Blinding of participants and personnel (performance bias) All outcomes	High risk	Participants and personnel not blinded
Blinding of outcome assessment (detection bias) All outcomes	High risk	Participants and personnel not blinded, outcomes subjective