Study the Effect of Acupuncture on Migraine Patient Without Aura Via Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

Dongzhimen Hospital Affiliated to Beijing University of Chinese Medicine

This study recruits 30 subjects into three groups, including two experimental groups and one control group. The two experimental groups receive acupuncture treatment for 4 weeks and two times functional magnetic resonance imaging scans as well as clinical symptom assessments. The control group receive one scan without any intervention. The aim of this study is to find the whether the effect of acupuncture treatment have diversity among migraineurs with different disease course.

This study recruits 10 patients with long course (> 5 years) without aura migraine, 10 patients with short course (< 5 years) without aura migraine and 10 healthy volunteers who meet the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Among the study, two migraine patient groups receive acupuncture treatment for 4 weeks, the frequency is 30 minutes each time, three times a week. According to the national standard of the people's Republic of China (GB / T 12346-2006) acupoint name and location, the acupuncture treatment includes SJ23 (Si Zhu Kong, unilateral), GB8 (Shuai Gu, unilateral), EX-HN5 (Tai Yang, unilateral), GB20 (Feng Chi, unilateral), LI4 (He Gu, bilateral), GB41 (Zu Lin Qi, bilateral), GB34 (Yang Ling Quan, bilateral) and SJ5 (Wai Guan, bilateral) acupoints. Both migraine patients receive scan in functional magnetic resonance imaging (Siemens 3.0T superconducting magnetic resonance scanner, Germany) and symptom scale assessment before the first acupuncture stimulation and post the last acupuncture stimulation. Healthy volunteers receive only one scanning without intervention.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Fitting to the standard of migraine without aura in the international classification of headache disease (ICHD-2) issued by the international headache society in 2004.
• Age from 18 to 55, male or female, with right-handedness.
• Having no depression or other serious mental illness.
• Having no psychoactive drugs taken in the past 3 months, or vasoactive drugs in the past 2 weeks.
• Having no habit of taking analgesics from a long time.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Having the first headache attack of migraine after 55 years old.
• Having a history of head injury, cluster headache, or other unclassified headaches.
• Taking medicine to prevent migraine in recent 4 weeks.
• Having the serious asymmetry or definite pathological changes in the anatomical structure of the head through the MRI scan.
• Cannot hold on the times of the MRI scan.