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Acupuncture best cure for headache
From AFP
March 16, 2004
ACUPUNCTURE is the best treatment for people who suffer from chronic headaches, according to the largest study into the effectiveness of this therapy for treating migraines.
British doctors recruited 401 patients who suffered from several days of severe headache each week.
Patients were allotted randomly to a group that received up to 12 acupuncture treatments per week, or to a control group that received conventional headache treatment, based on medication.
Each volunteer was asked to complete a diary, detailing the frequency and severity of their headaches and medicine use, for four weeks at the start of the study; again at three months; and finally at one year.
In the acupuncture group, the severity of headaches fell by 34 per cent over the year, compared to a decline of 16 per cent in the control group.
The acupuncture group also experienced on averaged 22 fewer days of headache per year, used 15 per cent less medication, made 25 per cent fewer visits to their doctor and were absent from work through sickness 15 per cent than the control group.
"Acupuncture leads to persisting, clinically relevant benefits for primary care patients with chronic headache, particularly migraine," the authors say.
The findings should be taken into account by policymakers when they have to assess the most cost-effective way of treating patients, they add.
The study, led by Andrew Vickers, a researcher at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, was published online on Monday by the British Medical Journal (BMJ).
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