BACKGROUND:Studies have shown that music therapy can improve a variety of symptoms of patients with dementia. The impact of music therapy on the global cognition of patients with dementia is controversial now. OBJECTIVE:To explore whether music therapy has an effect on the global cognitive functionof patients with dementia. METHODS:PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, Google Academy and National Knowledge Infrastructure were systematically searched to collect all literature studies published since the establishment of the database until November 2020. All randomized controlled trials that met the criteria of music therapy in the intervention group and standard care in the control group with outcome measures of Mini-mental State Examination (MMSE) were included. Analysis was performed using Stata 16.0. RESULTS:The results showed that compared with the control group, the MMSE score in the music therapy group was generally higher (MD = 0.86, 95% CI: 0.07–1.66, P = 0.03). CONCLUSIONS:The result of this study differs from those of previous relevant meta-analyses, suggesting that music therapy is likely to improve the global cognitive function of patients with dementia, but more rigorous clinical trials are still needed to provide more sufficient and real evidence.

中文翻译：

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音乐疗法会影响痴呆症患者的整体认知功能吗？荟萃分析

背景：研究表明，音乐疗法可以改善痴呆症患者的多种症状。音乐疗法对痴呆症患者的整体认知的影响现在是有争议的。目的：探讨音乐疗法是否对痴呆症患者的整体认知功能有影响。方法：系统搜索了PubMed，Web of Science，Embase，Google Academy和National Knowledge Infrastructure，以收集自数据库建立起至2020年11月为止发表的所有文献研究。所有符合干预组音乐疗法标准的随机对照试验并在对照组中采用标准的状态检查（包括迷你精神状态检查（MMSE））。使用Stata 16.0进行分析。结果：结果表明，与对照组相比，音乐治疗组的MMSE分数通常更高（MD = 0.86，95％CI：0.07-1.66，P = 0.03）。结论：本研究的结果与先前的相关荟萃分析不同，这表明音乐疗法可能会改善痴呆症患者的整体认知功能，但仍需要更严格的临床试验以提供更充分和真实的证据。