Abstract:To investigate the value of glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) in the differential diagnosis of intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) and ischemic stroke (IS). Methods Pubmed, Web of Science, Em-base, Chinese Wanfan databases and CNKI were retrieved. Studies about GFAP for diagnosis of cerebral hem- orrhage and ischemic stroke were included. The retrieval time was from the date of establishment of the databases until December 2016. Software Metadisc 1.4 was used to analyze data, and calculate SE, specific SP and DOR, likelihood ratio (LR), negative LR (NLR) and 95% CI. Heterogeneity was analyzed by I2 test. The summary receiver-operating characteristic curve was drawn, and the AUC was calculated. The Stata 12.0 was used to test the publication bias. Results As a result, 9 articles involving 1,057 cases were included. Meta-analysis results showed that the total diagnostic sensitivity of GFAP was 74% (68%-80%), the total specificity was 91% (88%-93%), the total positive likelihood ratio and negative likelihood ratio were 11.63 (4.75-28.50), and 0.30 (0.17-0.51), 95% confidence interval of DOR was (21.51, 106.40), and AUC was 0.9109. Conclusions GFAP is a useful biomarker for identification of IS and ICH, and thus worthy of clinical popu-larization and application.