By reading the full text of the remaining 174 articles that reported acupuncture therapy in neurogenesis of experimental ischemic stroke, a total of 140 studies were excluded for the following reasons: 51 used outcome measures marked with none of the neurogenesis indicators, i.e. Brdu, Nestin, PSA-NCAM, NeuN and GFAP; 17 used no control group; 20 were duplicate publication; 34 referred to immature animals; 18 were conducted using a non-focal cerebral ischemia model. Here, GFAP is linked to ischemic stroke.