Transcranial direct current stimulation for depression: A meta-analysis of randomized and controlled trials / 中华物理医学与康复杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To evaluate the effectiveness of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in the treatment of depression.Methods The randomized and controlled trials (RCTs) of tDCS in treating depression were searched in electronic databases including Pubmed,Embase,Cochrane library,Wanfang,VIP,CNKI databases all the data until January 2018.All of the studies were evaluated by 2 researchers according to inclusion criteria and exclusion criteria and the data were extracted and assessed by using the RevManS.3 software.Results Totally 11 RCTs studies (n =565 patients) were included in the meta-analysis.The results demonstrated that tDCS was beneficial on depression,with the depression score:[SMD=-0.67,95％CI (-0.84,-0.49),P＜0.05],response rate;[OR=2.87,95％CI(1.96,4.20),P＜0.05] and remission rate:[OR=1.85,95％CI (1.16,2.96),P＜0.05].Conclusion tDCS is of significant effect in treating depression.However,the RCTs included are of a relatively small number of subjects and limited quality,further studies should be focused on the randomized controlled trials of larger sample and higher quality.