The assessment of multipotent cell transplantation in acute-on-chronic liver failure: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF) is a serious life-threatening disease with high prevalence. Liver transplantation is the only efficient clinical treatment for ACLF. Because of the rapid progression and lack of liver donors, it is urgent to find an effective and safe therapeutic approach to ACLF. Recent studies showed that multipotent cell transplantation could improve the patients’ liver function and enhance their preoperative condition. Cells such as mesenchymal stem cells, bone marrow mononuclear cells and autologous peripheral blood stem cells, which addressed in this study have all been used in multipotent cell transplantation for liver diseases. However, its clinical efficiency is still debatable. This systematic review and meta-analysis explored the clinical efficiency of multipotent cell transplantation as a therapeutic approach for patients with ACLF. A detailed search of the Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, and Embase databases was conducted from inception to November 2017. The outcome measures were serum albumin, prothrombin time, alanine aminotransferase, total bilirubin, platelets, hemoglobin, white blood cells, and survival time. The quality of evidence was assessed using GRADEpro and Jaded scores. A literature search resulted in 537 citations. Of these, 9 articles met the inclusion criteria. It was found that multipotent cell transplantation was able to alleviate liver damage and improve liver function. Multipotent cell transplantation can also enhance the short-term and medium-term survival rates of ACLF. All 9 research articles included in this analysis reported no statistically significant adverse events, side effects, or complications. In conclusions, this study suggested that multipotent cell transplantation could be recommended as a potential therapeutic supplementary tool in clinical practice. However, clinical trials in large-volume centers still needed.