We performed a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to evaluate the protective effects of rosuvastatin on contrast-induced acute kidney injury (CI-AKI) and major adverse cardiovascular events (MACEs) in patients undergoing cardiac catherization.PubMed, MEDLINE, Web of Science, EMBASE, ClinicalTrials.gov, and the Cochrane Central RCTs were searched for RCTs from inception to May 2015, to compare rosuvastatin for preventing CI-AKI with placebo treatment in patients undergoing cardiac catherization.Five RCTs with a total of 4045 patients involving 2020 patients pretreated with rosuvastatin and 2025 control patients were identified and analyzed. Patients treated with rosuvastatin had a 51% lower risk of CI-AKI compared with the control group based on a fixed-effect model (OR = 0.49, 95% CI = 0.37-0.66, P < 0.001), and showed a trend toward a reduced risk of MACEs (OR = 0.62, 95% CI = 0.36-1.07, P = 0.08). A subgroup analysis showed that studies with Jadad score ≥3 showed a significant reduction of CI-AKI (OR = 0.53, 95% CI, 0.38-0.73, P < 0.001). However, the risk of CI-AKI did not significantly differ in the studies with Jadad score <3 (OR = 0.54, 95% CI, 0.13-2.24, P = 0.40). In addition, the rosuvastatin treatment showed no effect for preventing CI-AKI in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) undergoing elective cardiac catherization (I = 0%, OR = 0.81, 95% CI = 0.41-1.61, P = 0.55).This updated meta-analysis demonstrated that preprocedural rosuvastatin treatment could significantly reduce the incidence of CI-AKI, with a trend toward a reduced risk of MACEs in patients undergoing cardiac catheterization. However, rosuvastatin treatment did not seem to be effective for preventing CI-AKI in CKD patients undergoing elective cardiac catheterization.