23rd January 2012

Acupuncture for migraine prevention

Research into acupuncture to prevent migraine continues to be problematic and hotly debated as a study recently published in the Canadian Medical Journal demonstrates.

The more reliable clinical trials in headache are randomised, double-blind placebo-controlled trials to minimise expectations affecting the outcome.  This means a treatment is compared with a 'placebo' or dummy of identical appearance so that neither the patient nor the researcher knows which is which.

A major difficulty in acupuncture research is devising a placebo acupuncture technique that is unidentifiable to the patient or researcher.  Methods include inserting needles less deeply into the skin, not using classic acupuncture points, hiding needles in a sheath and other techniques to mimic the sensation of acupuncture.  Problems include the researchers knowing which treatment they are giving so are not 'blinded' and the potential for the placebo methods themselves or the attention of the practitioner having therapeutic effects.

This recently published study, led by Dr Ying Li of Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in China, found that traditional acupuncture may be only slightly better than a 'sham' or dummy version of the procedure.  The patients who received traditional Chinese acupuncture reported fewer migraine days, but the difference was not significant compared to patients in the control group.  Read the research abstract.

Reuters Health wrote an interesting analysis of this study and the issues facing research into acupuncture for migraine prevention.  Read the Reuters article here.

For further information on the subject see this acupuncture article on The Migraine Trust website written by Dr Saul Berkovitz.