Participants who were unable to move a limb through full range of movement against gravity were categorised this website as very weak; participants who could move through full range against gravity, but had less than normal strength, were categorised as weak. At admission to the trial, participants who were less than six months after stroke were categorised as sub-acute and those who were more than six months after stroke were categorised as chronic. The experimental intervention was electrical stimulation that produced strong repetitive muscle contractions applied in order to increase

muscle strength. The control intervention was defined according to each research question: (1) to examine the efficacy of electrical stimulation, the control intervention could be nothing, placebo or any other non-strengthening intervention; (2) to examine the effect of electrical stimulation compared PD0332991 with other strengthening interventions, the control intervention could be any other type of strengthening intervention; (3) to compare different doses or modes of electrical stimulation, the control

intervention could be any other dose or mode. The strength measurement had to be reported as peak force/torque generation and representative of maximum voluntary contraction (eg, manual muscle test or dynamometry). When multiple measures of strength were reported, the measure that reflected the trained muscle/s was used. If it was appropriate to use the measures from several different muscles (ie, these muscles had been targeted in the intervention), the means and SD of the individual measurements were summed.4 For measurement of activity, direct measures of performance were used regardless of whether they produced continuous data (eg, The Box and Block Test) or ordinal data (eg, Action Research Arm Test). Measures of general activity (eg, Barthel Index) were used if they were the only available measure

of activity. Information about the method (ie, design, participants, intervention and measures) and results (ie, number of participants, mean and SD of strength Astemizole and activity) were extracted by two reviewers and checked by a third reviewer. Where information was not available in the published trials, details were requested from the corresponding author. Since more trials reported pre-intervention and post-intervention scores than change scores, post-intervention scores were used to obtain the pooled estimate of the effect of intervention immediately (ie, post intervention) and long-term (ie, after a period of no intervention). Sub-group analyses were performed for the primary outcome (ie, strength measure) according to the time after stroke (sub-acute, chronic), and the initial level of strength (very weak, weak). If only the median and range of outcomes were available, additional data were requested from the author. The effect size was reported as Cohen’s standardised mean difference (95% CI), because different outcome measures were used.