TABLE 1.

Clinical trials of rhEPO treatment for ischemic stroke patients.

Trails	Patients	Number	Drug	Dose	Route	Time of treatment	Time of evaluation	Observations	Results	References
An exploratory double-blind study	Chronic stroke Patients (3 months after onset)	In a pilot study (n = 3); in an exploratory double-blind study (n = 6)	rhEPO + recombinant human G-CSF	rhEPO (300 U/kg); G-CSF (10 μg/kg)	Subcutaneous	Once a day for 5 days per month over 3 months	0, 5, and 30 days in each cycle and on day 180	Vital signs, adverse events, hematological values, and functional outcomes	No observations of serious adverse events. The grip power of the dominant hand was increased; mini-mental status examination (MMSE) and modified Barthel index (MBI) were not improved	Shin and Cho (2016)
A prospective, randomized, placebo-controlled trial (ISRCTN71371114)	Acute ischemic stroke who were not candidates for rtPA therapy at a single facility	EPO-treated group (n = 71); placebo-control group (n = 71)	rhEPO	5000 IU/dose	Subcutaneous	48 and 72 h after stroke	90 days	Recurrent stroke or death; long-term functional recovery (that is, 5 years)	Did not affect long-term recurrent stroke and mortality but reduced the scale of Barthel index; EPO therapy significantly improved long-term neurological outcomes	Tsai et al. (2015)
A randomized clinical trial	First acute ischemic stroke within 24 h of symptom onset	EPO-treated group (n = 37); placebo-control group (n = 43)	rhEPO	16,000 IU as a bolus dose and continued as 8000 IU each 12 h up to a total dose of 56,000 IU during 3 days	Iv	3 days after stroke	14 and 28 d	NIHSS	High dose of erythropoietin in first 24 h can be effective on reduction of ischemic stroke complication	Asadi et al. (2013)
Subgroup analysis from the data of the German Multicenter EPO Stroke Trial (Phase II/III; ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT00604630)	Acute ischemic stroke	n = 163	rhEPO; rtPA	40,000 IU each	Iv	Within 6 h of symptom onset, and at 24 and 48 h after stroke	1, 2, 3, 4 and 7 days	Serum biomarker profiles (S100b, GFAP, and ubiquitin C-terminal hydrolase (UCH-L1))	The reduction of serum biomarkers corroborated an advantageous effect of EPO in ischemic stroke	Ehrenreich et al. (2011)
Double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized German Multicenter EPO Stroke Trial (Phase II/III; ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT00604630)	Acute ischemic stroke in the middle cerebral artery territory	n = 460	rhEPO; rtPA	40,000 IU each	Iv	Within 6 h of symptom onset, at 24 and 48 h after stroke	90 days	Primary outcome: Barthel Index	The treatment of rtPA and rhEPO did not show any improvement in clinical outcomes but had a higher overall death rate	Ehrenreich et al. (2009)