Acupuncture for migraine prophylaxis

Abstract

Acupuncture is a portion of traditional Chinese medicine and has been used for Health care over 3,000 years in China. A migraine is a relatively common medical condition that can severely affect the quality of life of the sufferer and his or her family. Migraine is ranked by the World Health Organization as the 19th disease world-wide to cause disability; epidemiological studies of headache in Asia reported consistent findings that the prevalence ranged from 8.4% to 12.7%. Objective: To assess the efficacy of acupuncture in migraine prophylaxis. Patients and method: This study was carried out on 40 known case of migraineurs from both genders, aged 20-50 years. Migraineurs were randomly divided into 2 groups, 20 cases in each group, first group (control group) received medical treatment i.e. propranolol 40mg tid while 2nd group (acupuncture group) received 15 sessions of real acupuncture for 12 weeks, These forty migraineurs were treated in Emam Reza Hospital in Mashhad city in Iran and in private clinic of Dr. Mojtabavi over a period from December 2011 till March 2012. Statistical analysis was done by using SPSS in which independent t-test was used to compute significance. Result: There were significant differences between the acupuncture and control groups throughout the treatment periods on numbers of attacks and intensity of pain i.e. there is significant decrease, in numbers of migraine attacks and intensity of pain, more in patients treated with acupuncture than those treated with the medical therapy (propranolol). Conclusion: acupuncture is more effective, in reducing the frequency of attacks and intensity of the pain, than medical treatment for migraine prophylaxis.