R software is a free, powerful statistical and graphing software, including metafor, meta as well as metaplus packages. They can be used to conduct meta-analysis. This article introduces detailed operations of the metaplus package for meta-analysis using cases.
Ischemic stroke (IS) is one of the important diseases threatening human health. The occurrence and development of IS can trigger a series of complex pathophysiological changes, including damage to the blood-brain barrier, ion imbalance, oxidative stress, mitochondrial damage, which ultimately lead to the apoptosis and necrosis of nerve cells in the ischemic area. Impaired blood-brain barrier is a key factor for cerebral edema, hemorrhagic transformation and poor prognosis in patients with IS, and neuroinflammatory response plays an important role in the damage and repair of the blood-brain barrier. This article mainly focuses on the neuroinflammatory response mediated by glial cells, pro-inflammatory cytokines and matrix metalloproteinases and the related mechanisms of IS blood-brain barrier damage and repair, in order to provide new directions for the treatment of IS.
Objective To estimate the effect of desensitizing toothpaste containing arginine on dentine hypersensitivity. Methods Such databases as CNKI, PubMed, Web of Science and Cochrane Trials Register (Issue 4, 2008) were retrieved, and Google was used as a supplementary tool to search the information up to March 2010. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of treating dentine hypersensitivity with arginine-containing toothpaste were included, and the relevant information was extracted and the quality evaluation was undertaken. Meta-analyses were performed with RevMan 5.0 software. Results Five RCTs with 397 patients were included. The results of meta-analyses showed that at 8 weeks, arginine-containing toothpaste was significantly different from potassium-containing toothpaste in terms of tactile sensitivity test (SMD=1.32, 95%CI 0.68 to 1.96) and air blast test (SMD= –0.77, 95%CI –1.22 to 0.32) with a better therapeutic effect. Conclusion Current literature evidence shows that the arginine-containing toothpaste is effective for the dentine hypersensitivity. However, this study is based on a small number of RCTs and samples, so further studies with high-quality and large-sample RCTs are needed.