Acupuncture Effective for Migraine

[Ivan Seeking]

... Acupuncture for migraine patients proved as effective as standard drug therapy in reducing the number of attacks -- but so did sham acupuncture, according to a German study. [continued]

http://www.medpagetoday.com/Neurology/Migraines/tb/2778

So what is the conclusion here; that the drugs are just as much as sham as the acupuncture?

 

[Moonbear]

Well, it seems to be the case. Then again, I'd be curious about how they recruited their study volunteers. Afterall, if your medication is working, are you going to bother enrolling in a study to find out if acupuncture will treat your migraines? Though, medications don't work well for migraines, and in talking to one physician about migraines, he told me it was also really common that the medications would work initially, but stop working after taking them a while, so patients were often switching to new medications.

 

[ravenprp]

The conclusion of this study is that both acupuncture and sham acupuncture were equally effective in reducing the number of migraine attacks in patients. This suggests that the benefits observed in acupuncture may be due to a placebo effect rather than the actual treatment itself. However, more research is needed to fully understand the mechanisms behind the effectiveness of acupuncture for migraines.