Meta-Analysis on tDCS Efficacy for Alzheimer's Disease: 23 Studies and 823 Patients

Xin Wang's 2026 systematic review and meta-analysis investigates the therapeutic efficacy of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) for Alzheimer's disease. The analysis includes 23 studies involving 24 trials and 823 patients with mild to moderate AD, evaluating effects on global cognition, memory, executive function, language, and emotion. Results indicate tDCS significantly improves global cognition, with subgroup analyses revealing factors influencing memory and executive function outcomes.

Use Cases

• Benchmarking tDCS treatment outcomes based on reported standardized mean differences for cognitive domains
• Analyzing the influence of patient education level on treatment efficacy as indicated in subgroup results
• Studying the relationship between stimulation session count and memory/executive function improvements
• Investigating heterogeneity in clinical trial data for non-pharmacological Alzheimer's interventions

Strengths

• Analysis is based on 23 randomized controlled trials and 823 patient records, providing a substantive evidence base.
• Results include specific statistical measures like standardized mean differences and confidence intervals for multiple cognitive domains.
• Subgroup analyses identify concrete influential factors such as education level (6-10 years) and session count (≤10 sessions).

Limitations

• The dataset is a single 187.7 KB PDF document; the underlying tabular meta-analysis data is not provided separately.
• Column-level documentation for the statistical analysis is absent; data semantics must be inferred from the report.
• The authors note relatively high heterogeneity among included studies, which may affect generalizability.

Provenance

Source

Xin Wang via figshare

Collection Method

Systematic literature review and meta-analysis of studies from PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and Cochrane Library up to April 2025.

Time Range

Literature search covered studies up to April 2025.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-10 05:59:09

Geography

Geography of included studies is not specified.