SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Neurol.
Sec. Neurorehabilitation
This article is part of the Research TopicStroke Rehabilitation: Advances in Functional Assessment and Therapeutic InterventionsView all 5 articles
Effects of noninvasive brain stimulation in the treatment of poststroke depression: An overview of systematic reviews
Provisionally accepted
- 1Hunan University of Chinese Medicine, Changsha, China
- 2Shenzhen Nanshan People's Hospital, Shenzhen, China
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Background: In recent years, although numerous meta-analyses/systematic reviews (MAs/SRs) have explored the therapeutic effect of noninvasive brain stimulation (NIBS) on poststroke depression, the reliability and quality of its clinical evidence remain uncertain. Therefore, this study aims to conduct an overview of systematic reviews to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of NIBS for PSD, thereby providing evidence-based support for clinical decision-making. Methods: A comprehensive search of multiple databases, including PubMed, EMBASE, the Cochrane Library, Web of Science, CNKI, VIP, Wan Fang, and CBM, was con-ducted to identify systematic reviews and meta-analyses of NIBS for PSD. Following the literature screen and data extraction, the quality of the included studies was assessed using the PRISMA statement for reporting quality, the AMSTAR-2 tool for methodological quality, and the GRADE system for evidence quality. We extracted the main outcome indicators of depressive symptoms and the secondary outcome indicators of neurological function, cognitive function, daily living ability, anxiety symptoms, clinical efficiency and adverse reactions for analysis. Results: A total of 20 MAs/SRs were included. According to the PRISMA statement, 7 (35%) reports were relatively complete, 11 (55%) had problems, and 2 (10%) had serious information deficiencies. The results of the AMSTAR-2 evaluation revealed that 1 article (5%) was of moderate quality, 4 (20%) were of low quality, and 15 (75%) were of critically low quality. Thus, the overall quality was not high. The GRADE evaluation revealed that a total of 64 evidence bodies were included: 11 (17.2%) had moderate evidence, 12 (18.8%) had low-level evidence, and 41 (64.0%) had very low-level evidence, and no high-quality outcome indicator was identified. Conclusions: The included studies revealed that NIBS is an effective and safe treatment for PSD. However, because the methodology and results of the MAs/SRs were generally not of high quality, the reliability of the conclusions is limited to a certain extent. Future research should focus on conducting more high-quality, large-sample, multicen-ter follow-up studies to further verify the value of applying NIBS in PSD treatment.
Keywords: AMSTAR-2, Grade, noninvasive brain stimulation, Overview of systematic reviews, Poststroke depression, PRISMA
Received: 13 Oct 2025; Accepted: 28 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Liu, Huang, Tan and Zhao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Jie Tan
Ning Zhao
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