Trial reportAmerican journal of public health2011
Drinking rainwater: a double-blinded, randomized controlled study of water treatment filters and gastroenteritis incidence.
Trial report in American journal of public health, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Interventions to improve water quality for preventing diarrhoea.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2015Pooled it
- Risk factors for community-based reports of gastrointestinal, respiratory, and dermal symptoms: findings from a cohort study in Australia.Journal of epidemiology · 2014Trial
- Infectious disease outcomes associated with inadequate housing and access to healthy living practices in Australia: a systematic review.BMJ public health · 2026Article
- Physicochemical, microbiological quality, and risk assessment of water consumed by a quilombola community in midwestern Brazil.Environmental science and pollution research international · 2021Article
- A Review of Roof Harvested Rainwater in Australia.Journal of environmental and public health · 2018Review
- Assessing the Health Impact of Water Quality Interventions in Low-Income Settings: Concerns Associated with Blinded Trials and the Need for Objective Outcomes.Environmental health perspectives · 2016Article
- Community based study to compare the incidence and health services utilization pyramid for gastrointestinal, respiratory and dermal symptoms.BMC health services research · 2012Article
- Health risk from the use of roof-harvested rainwater in Southeast Queensland, Australia, as potable or nonpotable water, determined using quantitative microbial risk assessment.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2010Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesWe examined whether drinking untreated rainwater, a practice that is on the rise in developed countries because of water shortages, contributes to community gastroenteritis incidence.
methodsWe conducted a double-blinded, randomized controlled trial in Adelaide, Australia. Sham or active water treatment units were installed, and participants recorded incidences of illness in a health diary for 12 months. The primary outcome was highly credible gastroenteritis (HCG; characterized by a specified number of loose stools or vomiting alone or in combination with abdominal pain or nausea in a 24-hour period), and we used generalized estimating equations to account for correlations between numbers of HCG events for individuals in the same family.
resultsParticipants reported 769 episodes during the study (0.77 episodes/person/year), with an HCG incidence rate ratio (active vs sham) of 1.05 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.82, 1.33). Blinding of the participants was effective (index = 0.65; 95% CI = 0.58, 0.72).
conclusionsOur results suggest that consumption of untreated rainwater does not contribute appreciably to community gastroenteritis. However, our findings may not be generalizable to susceptible and immunocompromised persons because these groups were specifically excluded from the study.
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