Feagan 1995.

Methods	Randomized, double‐blind placebo‐control 7 centers
Participants	Active disease, symptoms at least 3 months despite prednisone > 12.5 mg/day, at least one attempt to discontinue Stratified according to prednisone dose < or > 20 mg/day N = 141
Interventions	Intramuscular methotrexate 25 mg/week (n = 94) or placebo (n = 47) for 16 weeks Prednisone co‐intervention: all patients, dose adjusted to 20 mg daily at the start of the study, constant dose 2 weeks, then tapered 2.5 mg/week, dose increased to maximum 40 mg/week for worsening; tapering 5 mg/week until 20 mg, then 2.5 mg/week 5‐aminosalicylates: not permitted
Outcomes	Remission: prednisone stopped and CDAI < 150 Mean CDAI score Quality of life (IBDQ) Steroid sparing effect
Notes
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Low risk	Computer generated randomization
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Low risk	Centralized randomization
Blinding (performance bias and detection bias) All outcomes	Low risk	Double‐blind The placebo was identical in appearance to the active drug and the investigators were unaware of the treatment assignments
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Low risk	No patients were lost to follow‐up The same proportion of patients were withdrawn from treatment prematurely in the two groups (28%)
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	Low risk	All outcomes were reported
Other bias	Low risk	No other issues