Meta-Analysis
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. Sep 26, 2022; 10(27): 9714-9726
Published online Sep 26, 2022. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v10.i27.9714
Clinical efficacy analysis of mesenchymal stem cell therapy in patients with COVID-19: A systematic review
Jun-Xia Cao, Jia You, Li-Hua Wu, Kai Luo, Zheng-Xu Wang
Jun-Xia Cao, Jia You, Li-Hua Wu, Kai Luo, Zheng-Xu Wang, Biotherapy Center, The Seventh Medical Center of People's Liberation Army General Hospital, Beijing 100700, China
Author contributions: Cao JX and Wang ZX conceived and designed the meta-analysis; Cao JX and Wang ZX performed the experiments; Cao JX, Wu LH, You J and Luo K analyzed the data; Cao JX and Wang ZX wrote the paper; All authors have read and approved the manuscript.
Supported by Scientific Research Projects in China, No. CLB19J053 and 19SWAQ13.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors indicate no potential conflicts of interest.
PRISMA 2009 Checklist statement: The manuscript was prepared and revised according to the PRISMA 2009 Checklist.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Zheng-Xu Wang, MD, PhD, Professor, Biotherapy Center, The Seventh Medical Center of People's Liberation Army General Hospital, No. 5 Nanmencang Road, Dongcheng District, Beijing 100700, China. zhxuwang@qq.com
Received: May 6, 2022
Peer-review started: May 6, 2022
First decision: June 11, 2022
Revised: June 26, 2022
Accepted: August 21, 2022
Article in press: August 21, 2022
Published online: September 26, 2022
Processing time: 124 Days and 23.2 Hours
Abstract
BACKGROUND

Currently, ongoing trials of mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) therapies for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have been reported.

AIM

In this study, we investigated whether MSCs have therapeutic efficacy in novel COVID-19 patients.

METHODS

Search terms included stem cell, MSC, umbilical cord blood, novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 and COVID-19, applied to PubMed, the Cochrane Controlled Trials Register, EMBASE and Web of Science.

RESULTS

A total of 13 eligible clinical trials met our inclusion criteria with a total of 548 patients. The analysis showed no significant decrease in C-reactive protein (CRP) levels after stem cell therapy (P = 0.11). A reduction of D-dimer levels was also not observed in patients after stem cell administration (P = 0.82). Furthermore, interleukin 6 (IL-6) demonstrated no decrease after stem cell therapy (P = 0.45). Finally, we investigated the overall survival (OS) rate after stem cell therapy in COVID-19 patients. There was a significant improvement in OS after stem cell therapy; the OS of enrolled patients who received stem cell therapy was 90.3%, whereas that of the control group was 79.8% (P = 0.02).

CONCLUSION

Overall, our analysis suggests that while MSC therapy for COVID-19 patients does not significantly decrease inflammatory markers such as CRP, D-dimer and IL-6, OS is improved.

Keywords: Stem cell; Meta-analysis; COVID-19; Mesenchymal stem cells

Core Tip: In this study, we investigated whether mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) have therapeutic efficacy in novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients. The analysis showed no significant decrease in C-reactive protein (CRP) levels and a reduction of D-dimer levels was also not observed in patients after stem cell administration. Interleukin 6 (IL-6) demonstrated no decrease after stem cell therapy. There was a significant improvement in overall survival (OS) after stem cell therapy. Overall, our analysis suggests that while MSC therapy for COVID-19 patients does not significantly decrease inflammatory markers such as CRP, D-dimer and IL-6, OS is improved.