Table 2.

Characteristics of included systematic reviews regarding stroke in COVID-19 infection

Authors	Origin	Type	Quality	Number of included studies	Types of included studies	Assessing the quality of included studies	Searched databases	Main results
1. Valencia-Enciso et al. 2020 [42]	Colombia	Systematic review	Moderate	47	Cohort, case series, case report, case–control	NOS	Pubmed, Scopus	A positive correlation seemed to exist between COVID-19 severity and temporality of stroke
2. Fraiman et al. 2020 [43]	South Korea	Systematic review	Critically Low	80	Not mentioned	None	Pubmed	Cerebrovascular events, especially ischemic stroke, were a common neurological manifestation in COVID-19 patients
3. Lee et al. 2020 [32]	Malaysia	Systematic review + meta-analysis	Moderate	28	Cohort, case series, case report	STROBE2	Pubmed, Medline, Cinhal	Stroke is an uncommon symptom in COVID-19 patients, but can be prognostic factor and an indicator of the severity of the infection
4. Bhatia et al. 2020 [44]	India	Systematic review	Moderate	30	Cohort, case series, case report	Oxford CEBM3 critical appraisal tool	Pubmed, Embase, Scopus	COVID-19 is associated with higher mortality rates in stroke patients
5. Wijeratne et al. 2020 [40]	Australia	Systematic review	Low	18	Cohort, case series, case report, case–control, reviews	None	Pubmed, Embase, Cochrane Library, Medline, Cinhal, Ovid	Neutrophil–Lymphocyte ratio at time admission is associated with the duration before onset of clinical features of AIS3
6. Fridman et al. 2020 [33]	Canada	Systematic review + meta-analysis	Low	10	Not mentioned	None	Pubmed, medRxiv, bioRxiv, Research Square search engines	The mortality of Stroke in COVID-19 patients is associated with age, comorbidities and the severity of the infection
7. Yamakawa et al. 2020 [35]	USA	Systematic review + meta-analysis	Moderate	26	Cohort, case series, case report, case–control	Assessment of risk of bias in prevalence studies	Pubmed, Embase,	The frequency of detected stroke in hospitalized patients was associated with age and other stroke risk factors
8. Katsanos et al. [34]	Greece	Systematic review + meta-analysis	High	18	Cohort	NOS	Pubmed, Scopus	COVID-19 infection is associated with an increased risk of ischemic stroke, especially cryptogenic stroke; in addition to an increased risk of mortality
9. Tan et al. 2020 [37]	Singapore	Systematic review + meta-analysis	Moderate	39	Cohort, case series, case report	NOS, JBI5 tool	Pubmed, Embase	AIS is associated with COVID-19 infection with a high mortality rate
10. Nannoni et al. 2020 [36]	UK	Systematic review + meta-analysis	Moderate	61	Cohort, case series, case report, case–control, letters	NOS	Pubmed, Scopus, MedRxiv	Acute cerebrovascular events are associated with the severity of the disease and pre-existing vascular risk factors in COVID-19 patients
11. Fatima et al. 2020 [41]	USA	Systematic review	Moderate	6	Cohort, case series, case report	GRADE6, Cochrane Collaboration’s tool	Pubmed, Embase, Scopus, Google Scholar, Cochrane Library, Medline	Stroke is associated with COVID-19 infection in patients with underlying risk factors including hypertension
12. Siepmann et al. 2021 [38]	Germany	Cohort + Systematic review	Critically Low	2	Cohort, experimental	Oxford CEBM tool	Pubmed, Embase, Cochrane Library	The severity of COVID-19 infection is associated with an increased risk of acute stroke
13. Szegedi et al. 2020 [39]	Germany	Narrative review + Systematic review	Critically Low	25	Cohort, case series, case report	None	Pubmed, Scopus	In COVID-19 patients the most common type of stroke was AIS

1. NOS :Newcastle–Ottawa Scale, 2. STROBE: Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology, 3. CEBM: Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, 4. AIS: Acute Ischemic Stroke, 5. JBI: Joanna Briggs Institute 6. GRADE: Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation. P value < 0.05 was considered to be statistically significant