ABSTRACT
Music therapy is beneficial for neurological diseases, especially in slowing down the progression of clinical symptoms in patients. However, it remains unclear to what extent can music therapy may affect patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Questions remain on whether music therapy can improve the quality of life (QOL) of AD patients, who are usually with poor QOL owing to the burden of the disease. A search that compared the effectiveness of music therapy to improve the QOL of AD patients was carried out. PubMed, Cochrane library clinical trial database, and WAN FANG database were searched to collect data from randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Two independent researchers extracted data from the selected eligible articles by using a collection form and RevMan5.3 statistical software and applied it for the meta-analysis. We included six RCTs in our meta-analysis. The results showed that compared to the control group, music intervention can significantly increase the score of the QOL-AD scale (MD=5.10, 95%CI: 2.95-7.24, p<0.001) and The World Health Organization QOL Rating Scale Short Form score (MD=5.76, 95%CI: 1.59-9.92, p=0.007). The results suggested that music therapy could improve the QOL for elderly patients with AD. Our findings indicated that music therapy might be considered a non-pharmaceutical therapy for patients with AD in the future.