Study selection and characteristics
As shown in Figure 1, of the 1788 records identified in the electronic
database, 1435 records were screened based on title and abstract after
removing all duplicate records; 48 full-text articles were assessed for
eligibility, among which 39 full-text articles were excluded because of
overlapping participants,28, 29 including participants
with history of dementia or moderate to severe cognitive
dysfunction,12, 13 and other reasons . Finally, 9
studies were included in the quantitative synthesis.10,
11, 15-19, 30, 31
As presented in Supplementary Table S3, of the 9 included studies, 6
were conducted in Europe, 2 in North America, 1 in Asia; all studies
were observational; 2 were prospective design, and 7 were retrospective
design; a total of 613,920 patients were included; the follow-up time
were varied from about 2 to 10 years; 1 study included patients with the
history of first-ever ischaemic stroke only, and the others included
mixed patients; 4 studies set the observational window varied from 6
months to 4 years. The quality of included studies was high, reflected
by a NOS score of 9 (Supplementary Table S4).