Table 1 Quality assessment of studies included in the systematic review
Quality assessment | Summary of findings | GRADE quality | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
No. of studies | Design | Limitations | Inconsistency | Indirectness | Imprecision | Other consideration | Effect sizes (95% CI) | |
Energy intake per day | ||||||||
5 | RCT and cluster RCT | No serious limitation | Three studies presented data in Mean (SD) and two in Median (IQR) | No serious indirectness | No serious imprecision | Strong association, no serious publication bias | Mean: Pooled SMD: 0.76 (0.63-0.88) | High |
Median: Pooled SMD: 1.06 (0.87-1.24) | ||||||||
Feeding frequency per day | ||||||||
5 | RCT and Cluster RCT | No serious limitation | Three studies had Means (SD) and two had % of feeding frequency >3/day | No serious indirectness | No serious imprecision | Studies showed strong association. The pooled effective size for RR was not statistically significant. | Mean: Pooled SMD: 0.48 (0.38-0.58) | High |
Frequency: Pooled RR: 0.99 (0.87-1.13) | ||||||||