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Background: The efficacy and safety of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) for functional independence and depression prevention in early stage of post-stroke (within 1 month after stroke onset) are still unclear. Methods: Relevant randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing early SSRIs therapy with placebo were sought from PubMed, Cochrane Library, Medline, and Embase. Primary outcomes were functional independence and depression occurrence. Secondary outcomes contained the improvement of Fugl-Meyer motor scale (FMMS) score and adverse events. We used fixed or random effects model to pooled effect estimates. And we chose risk ratio (RR) or mean differences (MDs) with the 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for data analysis. Results: We included 10 RCTs with total 5370 patients. The outcome of functional independence showed no significant difference between SSRIs and placebo group (RR, 1.28; 95% CI, 0.96–1.72; P = .10; I 2 = 92%). However, depression occurrence differed significantly between these 2 groups, which favored SSRIs group (RR, 0.78; 95% CI, 0.67–0.90; P = .001; I 2 = 23%). In addition, we observed that the side effects of SSRIs were seizure and nausea. Except psychiatric disorders/insanity rate was less in SSRIs group than placebo group (RR, 0.66; 95% CI, 0.48–0.90; P = .009) (I 2 = 0%), other adverse events were revealed non-significant in our meta-analysis. Conclusions: Our meta-analysis revealed that early SSRIs therapy were effective to prevent post-stroke depression. However, SSRIs did not improve patient's post-stroke functional independence. In addition to increase the occurrence of seizure and nausea, SSRIs were relatively safe.

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BackgroundIntravenous glucocorticoids are recommended for multiple sclerosis (MS). However, they can be inconvenient and expensive. Due to their convenience and low cost, oral glucocorticoids may be an alternative treatment. Recently, several studies have shown that there is no difference in efficacy and safety between oral methylprednisolone (oMP) and intravenous methylprednisolone (ivMP).ObjectivesWe sought to assess the clinical efficacy, safety and tolerability of oral methylprednisolone versus intravenous methylprednisolone for MS relapses in this meta-analysis.MethodsRandomized controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating the clinical efficacy, safety and tolerability of oral methylprednisolone versus intravenous methylprednisolone for MS relapses were searched in PubMed, Cochrane Library, Medline, EMBASE and China Biology Medicine until October 25, 2016, without language restrictions. The proportion of patients who had improved by day 28 was chosen as the efficacy outcome. We chose the risk ratio (RR) to analyze each trial with the 95% confidence interval (95% CI). We also used the fixed-effects model (Mantel–Haenszel approach) to calculate the pooled relative effect estimates.ResultsA total of 5 trials were identified, which included 369 patients. The results of our meta-analysis revealed that no significant difference existed in relapse improvement at day 28 between oMP and ivMP (RR 0.96, 95% CI 0.84 to 1.10). No evidence of heterogeneity existed among the trials (P = 0.45, I2 = 0%). Both treatments were equally safe and well tolerated except that insomnia was more likely to occur in the oMP group compared to the ivMP group.ConclusionOur meta-analysis reveals strong evidence that oMP is not inferior to ivMP in increasing the proportion of patients experiencing clinical improvement at day 28. In addition, both routes of administration are equally well tolerated and safe. These findings suggest that we may be able to replace ivMP with oMP to treat MS relapses.