Medium- and long-term efficacy of ligustrazine plus conventional medication on ischemic stroke： a systematic review and meta-analy- sis

• Published in: 中医杂志：英文版 2013 (6), p.715-720
• Main Author: Xiaojia Ni Shaonan Liu Xinfeng Guo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 中期; 国家知识基础设施; 川芎嗪; 注射液; 疗效; 缺血; 脑卒中; 药物治疗
• ISSN: 0255-2922

OBJECTIVE： To evaluate the medium- to long-term efficacy of ligustrazine plus conventional medicine treating ischemic stroke. METHODS： Randomized controlled trials （RCTs） testing ligustrazine in the treatment of acute isch- emic stroke were retrieved from Cochrane Library, PubMed, Excerpta Medica Database, Chinese Medi- cal Journal Database, Chinese Biomedical Data- base, China National Knowledge Infrastructure Da- tabase, and Chinese Clinical Trial Register, and then identified by the inclusive and exclusive criteria. The quality of trials was assessed with the Co- chrane Handbook 5.1, a risk of bias assessment toot. RevMan 5.1 was used for meta-analysis.RESULTS： Three RCTs involving 643 patients were included. Compared to conventional medicine treatment alone, ligustrazine plus conventional medicine treatment showed significant difference in reduction of stroke recurrence either at the end of 1-year follow-up [RR=0.42, 95% CI （0.18, 0.94）, P〈 0.05] or 3-years observation [RR=0.48, 95% C/（0.27, 0.83）, P〈0.05]. The ligustrazine group also showed higher survival rate [RR=1.67, 95% CI （1.02, 0.2.71）, P〈0.05] and significantly better effective rate [RR= 1.28, 95% CI（1.10, 1.50）, P〈0.05] than that of the control group at the end of 1 year visit. Only one tri- al conducted safety assessment and no adverse events were reported. The methodological quality of all the trials included was generally poor. CONCLUSION： The findings provided evidence that the combination of ligustrazine and conven- tional medication was medium- and long-term ben- eficial to the patients suffering ischemic stroke. But more RCTs of high quality are needed to further prove the efficacy and safety of using ligustrazine for ischemic stroke.