Abstract: AIM: To evaluate the efficacy and safety of Cerebrolysin in the treatment of mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease (AD).MOTHODS: Data source: searching the Cochrane Library, Medline, and Chinese Biomedical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System for Compact Disc (CBMDISC) and communicating with EBEWE Pharmaceutical Ltd for the randomized trials comparing Cerebrolysin with placebo in AD.Data extraction: available data on clinical global impression (CGI), cognitive performance and Activities of Daily Living (ADL) were extracted from 5 trails and combined with standard meta-analysis methods.Results: There was some heterogeneity, which was mainly caused by the trial Ruether E (1994), among the 5 clinical trials in this meta-analysis (Q=8.295, P=0.081) Comparing Cerebrolysin with placebo, the estimator of treatment effect (log (OR)) based on the random-effect model was 1.080 (95% IC [0.645, 1.481]).Sensitivity analysis showed that the treatment effect was robust to different models or different estimate methods.In clinical practice, the safety of Cerebrolysin was documented with the incident rate of adverse event as 2%-7%.And the most common adverse events were headaches, dizziness and anxiety.Conclusion: Cerebrolysin is a safe drug that could significantly improve the clinical global impression in patients with mild to moderate AD.

Key words: Cerebrolysin, Alzheimer's disease, Randomized controlled clinical trial, Meta-analysis