Meta-analysis of the effects of inert gases on cerebral ischemia–reperfusion injury

Recently, noble gas has become a hot spot within the medical field like respiratory organ cerebral anemia, acute urinary organ injury and transplantation. However, the shield performance in cerebral ischemia–reperfusion injury (CIRI) has not reached an accord. This study aims to evaluate existing evidence through meta-analysis to determine the effects of inert gases on the level of blood glucose, partial pressure of oxygen, and lactate levels in CIRI. We searched relevant articles within the following both Chinese and English databases: PubMed, Web of science, Embase, CNKI, Cochrane Library and Scopus. The search was conducted from the time of database establishment to the end of May 2023, and two researchers independently entered the data into Revman 5.3 and Stata 15.1. There were total 14 articles were enclosed within the search. The results showed that the amount of partial pressure of blood oxygen in the noble gas cluster was beyond that in the medicine gas cluster (P < 0.05), and the inert gas group had lower lactate acid and blood glucose levels than the medical gas group. The partial pressure of oxygen (SMD = 1.51, 95% CI 0.10 ~ 0.91 P = 0.04), the blood glucose level (SMD = − 0.59, 95% CI − 0.92 ~ − 0.27 P = 0.0004) and the lactic acid level (SMD = − 0.42, 95% CI − 0.80 ~ − 0.03 P = 0.03) (P < 0.05). These results are evaluated as medium-quality evidence. Inert gas can effectively regulate blood glucose level, partial pressure of oxygen and lactate level, and this regulatory function mainly plays a protective role in the small animal ischemia–reperfusion injury model. This finding provides an assessment and evidence of the effectiveness of inert gases for clinical practice, and provides the possibility for the application of noble gases in the treatment of CIRI. However, more operations are still needed before designing clinical trials, such as the analysis of the inhalation time, inhalation dose and efficacy of different inert gases, and the effective comparison of the effects in large-scale animal experiments.