Figure 1.

Flow chart of the identification of eligible studies. Initially 171 articles were searched from major databases, including 26 in PubMed, 72 in EMBASE and 73 in Web of Science. One study was identified from references. Duplicate checking was done, and 65 articles were ruled out. Two independent reviewers screened titles and abstracts, and 100 articles were excluded including 69 reviews, 9 animal studies, 9 articles without chronic kidney disease (CKD), 3 articles without roxadustat, and 10 conference abstracts. Then the full-texts of 7 articles were reviewed. Two articles of dialysis dependent CKD patients and one study without placebos were excluded. Because two studies showed results of the same cohort, 3 articles were finally included for meta-analysis.