*3.2. Selection Criteria*

In the second screening stage, a total of 532 articles from the initial 621 articles were excluded after screening, based on in-depth observations of the abstract content of the articles. The second screening yielded 89 articles that met the criteria. Of the 89 articles, additional in-depth observations of the full text of all the articles were made. A total of 46 articles remained after this stage 3 screening. Upon completion of this final stage, a total of 38 publications and 5 additional articles through manual reference tracing were included in the final data collection and further analyzed. All stages of systematic screening of the articles are shown in Figure 6.

## *3.3. Data Extraction*

During the final selection, data were drawn from 43 studies on fucosterol. The data collection process was based on two main themes: (1) the characteristics of the articles, and (2) the criteria used to determine the bioactivity, safety, and toxicity of fucosterol. Specifically, the following features were extracted: year of publication, name of journal, geographic area where the research was conducted, author affiliation, publisher, biological

activity of fucosterol, source of fucosterol, method used, experimental model, concentration of fucosterol, safety and toxicity of fucosterol.
