Objective To assess the clinical efficacy of statins for preventing stroke recurrence. Methods We searched The Cochrane Library, PubMed, EMbase, CBM, CSJD, and CJFD for randomized controlled trials on the use of statin drugs to prevent stroke recurrence (up to May 10, 2008), and manually searched key Chinese magazines in the related fields. Two reviewers extracted data independently using a designed extraction form. The quality of included trials was evaluated according to the Cochrane handbook 4.12. RevMan 5.0 software was used for data analysis. Results Six randomized controlled trials involving 9,675 patients were identified. The results of meta-analysis showed that there was no statistical difference in stroke recurrence rate (RR=0.94, 95%CI 0.84 to 1.04, P=0.21) and fatal stroke occurrence (RR=0.77, 95%CI 0.48 to 1.25, P=0.30) between statins and placebo groups, but a significant difference was found between the two groups in transient ischemic attack occurrence (RR=0.80, 95%CI 0.69 to 0.92, P=0.002). Conclusion Current evidence indicates that statin drugs have no superiority to prevent stroke recurrence and fatal stroke occurrence, but can prevent transient ischemic attack.
