OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the impact of statin therapy on the recurrence rate in patients with persistent atrial fibrillation (AF) after electrical cardioversion.METHODS: PubMed, EMBbase, Cochrane central register of controlled trials were searched up to February 2015 to identify randomized controlled trials, which reported the effect of statin therapy on AF recurrence after electrical cardioversion. The data were analyzed by RevMan 5.3 and Stata 12.0 software.RESULTS: Six trials with 572 patients were included. The result showed that statin therapy had no effect on the recurrence rate in patients with persistent AF after electrical cardioversion (OR=0.60, 95%CI: 0.32-1.11, P>0.05) compared with controls. Four out of the six trials investigated the effect of atorvastatin on the recurrence rate of AF after electrical cardioversion, subgroup analysis of these trials showed that compared with controls, atorvastatin had no effect on the recurrence of AF after electrical cardioversion (OR=0.59, 95%CI: 0.25-1.39, P>0.05). Three out of the six trials had high quality (Jadad score≥3), subgroup analysis of these trials also showed that statins did not affect the recurrence rate of AF after electrical cardioversion (OR=0.76, 95%CI: 0.49-1.16, P>0.05).CONCLUSION: This analysis suggested that statin therapy had no effect on the recurrence rate in patients with persistent AF after electrical cardioversion.