REVIEW article
Front. Nutr.
Sec. Nutrition, Psychology and Brain Health
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnut.2025.1642161
The impact of nutritional support therapy combined with conventional treatment models on short-term symptom improvement and complications in stroke patients: A systematic review and meta-analysis
Provisionally accepted
- The Central Hospital of Wuhan, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Objective: To methodically assess the effectiveness of nutritional support therapy combined with conventional treatment on short-term symptom improvement, nutritional and immune recovery, and complication rates in stroke patients. Method: A thorough literature search was carried out utilizing PubMed, EMBASE, ScienceDirect, the Cochrane Library, and major Chinese databases (CNKI, VIP, Wanfang, and CBM) from inception to the present. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating the impact of nutritional support in stroke patients were included. Two reviewers independently extracted the data, and the Cochrane Handbook 5.3 was used to determine the risk of bias. RevMan 5.3 was used to conduct the meta-analysis. Result: Following PRISMA guidelines, 1,693 records were retrieved and screened, resulting in the inclusion of 8 randomized controlled trials with a total of 727 individuals. Meta-analysis revealed that nutritional support significantly improved Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) scores, serum markers of nutritional status (Hb, TLC), and immune parameters (IgA, IgG, IgM). Pro-inflammatory cytokines (IL-2, IL-6, TNF-α) were significantly reduced. Moreover, the incidence of infectious complications was lower in the intervention group. However, heterogeneity among studies was high in several analyses, warranting cautious interpretation. Conclusion: Nutritional support combined with conventional therapy improves nutritional and immune recovery and reduces infection risk in stroke patients. However, given the high heterogeneity and methodological limitations of included trials, the certainty of evidence remains low to very low, and these results should be interpreted cautiously.
Keywords: Nutritional support therapy, Conventional treatment, Stroke, Long-termprognosis, Meta-analysis
Received: 07 Jul 2025; Accepted: 20 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhang, Li, Ding, Zhang, Zhang and Peng. 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: Xiapei Peng, pengxiapei@163.com
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.