Background: The efficacy and safety of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) for functional independence and depression prevention in early stage of post-stroke (within 1 month after stroke onset) are still unclear.
Methods: Relevant randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing early SSRIs therapy with placebo were sought from PubMed, Cochrane Library, Medline, and Embase. Primary outcomes were functional independence and depression occurrence. Secondary outcomes contained the improvement of Fugl-Meyer motor scale (FMMS) score and adverse events. We used fixed or random effects model to pooled effect estimates. And we chose risk ratio (RR) or mean differences (MDs) with the 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for data analysis.
Results: We included 10 RCTs with total 5370 patients. The outcome of functional independence showed no significant difference between SSRIs and placebo group (RR, 1.28; 95% CI, 0.96-1.72; P = .10; I = 92%). However, depression occurrence differed significantly between these 2 groups, which favored SSRIs group (RR, 0.78; 95% CI, 0.67-0.90; P = .001; I = 23%). In addition, we observed that the side effects of SSRIs were seizure and nausea. Except psychiatric disorders/insanity rate was less in SSRIs group than placebo group (RR, 0.66; 95% CI, 0.48-0.90; P = .009) (I = 0%), other adverse events were revealed non-significant in our meta-analysis.
Conclusions: Our meta-analysis revealed that early SSRIs therapy were effective to prevent post-stroke depression. However, SSRIs did not improve patient's post-stroke functional independence. In addition to increase the occurrence of seizure and nausea, SSRIs were relatively safe.