“…Of the 47 studies that evaluated cardiovascular medication use, sufficient data for pooling were available in 34 studies (39 separate cohorts as two cohorts were included in three studies [43,66,72] and three cohorts in one study [71]). In the unadjusted pooled analyses (23 studies) [27-29,35,36,38,39,41,43,44,46,47,51,53,55-58,64,68,71,73,75], patients in rural areas with cardiovascular disease or diabetes were less likely to receive evidence-based cardiovascular drug therapy compared to urban residents (pooled unadjusted OR 0.88, 95% CI 0.79, 0.98, p = 0.02; I 2 = 97%) (Table 1). However, among the 21 studies that adjusted for potential confounders [9,27,29,34,38,41-45,47,52,55,56,58,60-62,66,69,72] pooled analysis indicated no statistically significant difference between rural and urban patients in the use of cardiovascular medications (pooled adjusted OR 1.02, 95% CI 0.91 to 1.13, p = 0.77, I 2 = 97%) (Figure 2).…”