Objective To evaluate the effectiveness of tacrolimus and cyclosporine A on acute rejection, chronic rejection and survival rate of patient and graft after renal transplantation. Methods We searched MEDLINE (1989 to Nov.2004), EMBASE (1989 to Nov.2004), The Chinese Biomedical Database (CBM) (1998 to Nov.2004), Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (The Cochrane Library Issue 4, 2004) and handsearched 8 Chinese journals. Trials comparing tacrolimus with cyclosporine A after renal transplantation were included. The quality of included studies such as randomization, blinding, allocation concealment was evaluated and meta-analysis was performed using RevMan 4.2.7 software. Results Eighteen studies involving 3 738 patients were included. Tacrolimus was more effective in decreasing the incidence of acute rejection and chronic rejection than that of cyclosporine A with RR 0.65, 95％CI 0.56 to 0.75 at the end of 6 months; with RR 0.70, 95％CI 0.54 to 0.92 at the end of 12 months for number of patients of acute rejection. The pooled RR was 0.65 (95％CI 0.47 to 0.89) for number of patients of chronic rejection. Tacrolimus could reduce the severity of acute rejection. The relative risks of pathologic grade BanffⅠand Banff (Ⅱ＋Ⅲ) were 1.64 (95％CI 1.08 to 2.49) and 0.75 (95％CI 0.63 to 0.89) respectively. But there was no significant difference on the survival rate of patient and graft within 5 years between the two groups. The relative risk of 6, 12, 24, 36 and 60 months were 1.01 (95％CI 0.99 to 1.02), 1.00 (95％CI 0.99 to 1.02), 1.01 (95％CI 0.97 to 1.05), 1.00 (95％CI 0.97 to 1.03) and 0.97 (95％CI 0.88 to 1.07) respectively for the survival rate of patient and 1.04 (95％CI 1.01 to 1.07), 1.03 (95％CI 1.00 to 1.06), 0.99 (95％CI 0.91 to 1.07), 1.04 (95％CI 0.99 to 1.09) and 1.04 (95％CI 0.90 to 1.21) respectively for the survival rate of grafts. Conclusions On acute rejection and chronic rejection, tacrolimus is more effective than cyclosporine A, but there is no difference in the graft or patient survival rate.