In Reply We thank Zhang and Niu and Aghai for their interest in our systematic review of use of the early-onset sepsis (EOS) calculator. Zhang and Niu worry about study heterogeneity and publication bias. We carefully assessed all 13 included studies and found it appropriate to meta-analyze the 6 studies reporting data before and after EOS calculator implementation with comparable settings in both epochs.¹ We grouped these studies based on their inclusion criteria; 4 studies including all newborns and 2 studies only including newborns exposed to maternal chorioamnionitis. We found no evidence of heterogeneity within studies including newborns regardless of exposure to chorioamnionitis (I² = 0%, Figure 2). Heterogeneity in the chorioamnionitis-exposed subgroup was transparent because it contained only 2 studies.

在答复中，我们感谢Zhang，Niu和Aghai对我们对使用早期发作脓毒症（EOS）计算器的系统评价的兴趣。张和牛担心研究的异质性和发表偏见。我们仔细评估了所有13项纳入研究，并发现对进行EOS计算器实施前后的6个研究报告数据进行荟萃分析是合适的，这两个时期的设置均相当。¹我们根据纳入标准对这些研究进行了分组；4项研究（包括所有新生儿）和2项研究（仅包括暴露于母亲绒毛膜羊膜炎的新生儿）。我们没有发现包括新生儿在内的研究存在异质性的证据，无论是否暴露于绒膜羊膜炎（I ² = 0％，图2）。绒毛膜羊膜炎暴露的亚组的异质性是透明的，因为它仅包含2个研究。