ObjectiveTo systematically review the data of peripheral inflammatory markers in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and vascular dementia (VaD) to further indicate pathogenesis and antidiastole.MethodsPubMed, EMbase, The Cochrane Library, CNKI, WanFang Data and VIP databases were electronically searched to collect studies on peripheral inflammatory markers in patients with AD and VaD from inception to July 2020. Two reviewers independently screened literature, extracted data, and assessed risk of bias of included studies, and meta-analysis was performed by using Stata 15.1SE software.ResultsA total of 30 studies involving 2 377 patients were included. The results of meta-analysis showed that the IL-6 level was higher in VaD group than that in AD group (SMD=?0.477, 95%CI ?0.944 to ?0.009, P=0.046). However, there were no statistical difference in peripheral IL-1β (SMD=?0.034, 95%CI ?0.325 to 0.257, P=0.818), TNF-α (SMD=0.409, 95%CI ?0.152 to 0.970, P=0.153) or CRP (SMD=0.277, 95%CI ?0.228 to 0.782, P=0.282) levels.ConclusionsThese findings suggest that IL-6 may be sensitive markers to distinguish AD from VaD. Due to limited quality and quantity of the included studies, more high-quality studies are required to verify the conclusions.