“…Concerning study design, seven were retrospective observational studies, six were prospective observational studies, five were RCTs, and two were single-arm CTs. The sample size was <50 in four studies (Arai et al, 1998a;Nakayama et al, 1998;Shimizu et al, 2008;Kano et al, 2016), between 50 and 99 in five studies (Arai et al, 2003;Marciniak et al, 2009;Nakashima et al, 2011;Lee et al, 2015;Miarons et al, 2018) between 100 and 500 in five studies (Arai et al, 2001;Bosch et al, 2012;Matsumoto et al, 2012;Sato et al, 2013;Fernandes et al, 2021) and >500 in five studies (Arai et al, 1998b;Arai et al, 2005;Liu et al, 2012;Miarons et al, 2016;Kumazawa et al, 2019); in one study the overall sample size was not specified (Noguchi et al, 2020). The majority of the studies recruited neurological patients (10 studies on stroke (Arai et al, 1998a;Arai et al, 2001;Arai et al, 2003;Arai et al, 2005;Shimizu et al, 2008;Marciniak et al, 2009;Liu et al, 2012;Matsumoto et al, 2012;Lee et al, 2015;Kumazawa et al, 2019), one study on dementia (Bosch et al, 2012), and one on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis); in five studies participants had multiple etiologies (Nakayama et al, 1998;Nakashima et al, 2011;Miarons et al, 2016;Miarons et al, 2018;Fernandes et al, 2021).…”