Meta-Analysis
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2019. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Meta-Anal. Jul 31, 2019; 7(7): 358-372
Published online Jul 31, 2019. doi: 10.13105/wjma.v7.i7.358
Effect of dl-3-n-butylphthalide on infarction volume in animal models of ischemic stroke: A meta-analysis
Di Luan, Zheng-Yu Wu, Yuan-Xiang Zhang, Li-Li Yuan, Yang Xu, Zhao-Hu Chu, Ling-Song Ma, Ya-Ping Wang, Shou-Cai Zhao
Di Luan, Li-Li Yuan, Yang Xu, Zhao-Hu Chu, Ling-Song Ma, Ya-Ping Wang, Shou-Cai Zhao, Department of Neurology, Yijishan Hospital affiliated to Wannan Medical College, Wuhu 241000, Anhui Province, China
Zheng-Yu Wu, Yuan-Xiang Zhang, Department of Clinical Pharmacy, Yijishan Hospital affiliated to Wannan Medical College, Wuhu 241000, Anhui Province, China
Author contributions: Luan D, Wu ZY, Zhang YX, Yuan LL, and Zhao SC conceived and designed the study; study searching was done by Luan D and Wu ZY. Further, studies screening and selection was done by Luan D and Wu ZY independently and disagreement was resolved by Zhao SC, Xu Y, Chu ZH, and Ma LS. Luan D and Wu ZY performed data extraction independently. Wang YP did analysis in supervision of Zhao SC. All authors were involved in interpretation of the results. The final draft of this manuscript was done by Luan D and read and approved by all the authors.
Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, NO. 81701161.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors deny any conflict of interest.
PRISMA 2009 Checklist statement: The manuscript is designed as per PRISMA 2009 guideline and checklist is provided as supplementary file.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Shou-Cai Zhao, MD, Doctor, Professor, Teacher, Department of Neurology, Yijishan Hospital affiliated to Wannan Medical College, Wuhu 241000, Anhui Province, China. neurozsc@wnmc.edu.cn
Telephone: +86-18505539779
Received: May 10, 2019
Peer-review started: May 14, 2019
First decision: July 26, 2019
Revised: July 27, 2019
Accepted: July 29, 2019
Article in press: July 29, 2019
Published online: July 31, 2019
Processing time: 82 Days and 2.7 Hours
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background

Ischemic stroke is a frequently-occurring disease in the elderly and characterized by high morbidity and mortality. Dl-3-n-butylphthalide (NBP), a synthetic compound based on natural celery seeds, has potential therapeutic effects on cerebral ischemia, brain trauma, memory impairment, and epilepsy. The systematic review of animal research is of great significance in drug development.

Research motivation

There are many studies on the therapeutic effects of NBP in the middle cerebral artery occlusion model, and there is controversy about whether NBP reduces the volume of cerebral infarction.

Research objectives

To evaluated effect of NBP on infarct volume in experimental ischemic stroke.

Research methods

We searched Chinese and English databases to screen NBP-related literature. Data such as cerebral infarction volume and potential therapeutic mechanisms were extracted. The risk of bias tool of the Systematic Review Centre for Laboratory animal Experimentation’s was applied to assess the methodological quality of the included studies. Data analysis was performed by Revman 5.3 software.

Research results

The data of meta-analysis of the 21 studies had suggested that NBP reduced the cerebral infarction volume of middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) model animals compared to the control group significantly. Moreover, the data of meta-analysis of fifteen studies adopting the tMCAO model also had verified that NBP reduced infarct volume significantly. The same is true of studies using the pMCAO model. To analyze the effects of the NBP on the volume of cerebral infarction with pre- or post-administrated NBP in proceeding the MCAO model, the data had showed that both the pre-administration and the post-administration all reduced the infarct volume of the model animals.

Research conclusions

NBP was effective in experimental ischemic stroke.

Research perspectives

Animal experiments are an important link between basic research and clinical experiments. The results have reference value for the next step in designing and implementing clinical research. Compared with clinical research, the principles of randomization and blindness are theoretically easier to be implemented in animal experiments. Animal research is important for comprehending disease mechanisms, and high-quality preclinical research is also critical for translational medicine. Therefore, to obtain more accurate and less biased experimental data, designing animal programs should follow the guidelines all the time, calculate sample size in the beginning, apply applicable animals, use appropriate anesthetic drugs, adopt random feeding, and blind models during the experiment, and employ random outcome measurements at the time of evaluation.