Headache & Migraine Studies
13. The aim of this study was to investigate the efficacy and tolerability of acupuncture compared with topiramate treatment in chronic migraine (CM) prophylaxis. A significantly larger decrease in the mean monthly number of moderate/severe headache days (primary end point) from 20.2 ± 1.5 days to 9.8 ± 2.8 days was observed in the acupuncture group compared with 19.8 ± 1.7 days to 12.0 ± 4.1 days in the topiramate group (p ( .01) Significant differences favoring acupuncture were also observed for all secondary efficacy variables. These significant differences still existed when we focused on those patients who were overusing acute medication. Researchers concluded that acupuncture could be considered a treatment option for CM patients willing to undergo this prophylactic treatment, even for those patients with medication overuse.
14. The aim of this study was to observe the therapeutic effect of acupuncture therapy for aura-absence migraine. A total of 60 aura-absence migraine outpatients who signed an informed consent participated in the present study. They were randomized into medication group and acupuncture group (n = 30/group) according to a randomized number table and their visiting sequence.
In comparison with the pre-treatment, scores of physical functioning (PF), role-physical (RP), bodily pain (BP), social functioning (SF), role-emotional (RE), vitality (VT), mental-health (MH) and general health (GH) of SF-36 in both medication and acupuncture groups were increased significantly (P < 0.05), and those of PF, RP and BP of the acupuncture group were significantly higher than the scores of the medication group (P < 0.05). The integral scores of headache were decreased significantly in both medication group and acupuncture group (P < 0.05), and those of the acupuncture group were remarkably lower than the scores of the medication group after the treatment (P < 0.05). Researchers concluded acupuncture therapy can raise the migraineurs' life quality, lessen the times and severity of headache attack, and its therapeutic effect is superior to that of medication.
15. Acupuncture has a long tradition of use for the treatment of many pain conditions, including headache. Its effectiveness has been studied mainly for primary headaches, particularly for migraine and tension-type headache (TTH). Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has two diagnostic frameworks for headaches: meridian diagnoses, based on the location of the pain and on the meridians (or channels) that pass through it; syndrome diagnoses, dependent on external or internal factors and on the characteristics of the pain.
The complicated system of TCM classification of headaches has frequently generated great diversity among the various therapeutic approaches used in the different studies on acupuncture in headache treatment. Despite these differences, the recent Cochrane systematic reviews on acupuncture in migraine and in TTH suggest that acupuncture is an effective and valuable option for patients suffering from migraine or frequent TTH. Moreover, acupuncture seems to be a cost-effective treatment.