Acupuncture for the prevention of tension‐type headache

Klaus Linde,Gianni Allais,Benno Brinkhaus, Yutong Fei,Michael Mehring,Byung‐Cheul Shin,Andrew Vickers,Adrian R White · Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews · 2016 April 19

DOI 10.1002/14651858.CD007587.pub2

Objective

To investigate whether acupuncture is a) more effective than no prophylactic treatment/routine care only; b) more effective than 'sham' (placebo) acupuncture; and c) as effective as other interventions in reducing headache frequency in adults with episodic or chronic tension‐type headache.

Conclusions

The available results suggest that acupuncture is effective for treating frequent episodic or chronic tension‐type headaches. Patients in acupuncture group reported to have at least 50% reduction of headache frequency compared to placebo group.

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Insights

The available evidence suggests that a course of acupuncture consisting of at least six treatment sessions can be a valuable option for people with frequent tension-type headache.

Acupuncture added to usual care or treatment of headaches only on onset (usually with pain-killers) in two large trials resulted in 48 in 100 participants having headache frequency at least halved, compared to 17 of 100 participants given usual care only. Acupuncture was compared with ‘fake’ acupuncture, where needles are inserted at incorrect points or do not penetrate the skin, in six trials. Headache frequency halved in 52 of 100 participants receiving true acupuncture compared with 43 of 100 participants receiving ‘fake’ acupuncture. The results were dominated by one large, good quality trial (with about 400 participants), which showed that the effect of true acupuncture was still present after six months. There were no differences in the number of side effects of real and ‘fake’ acupuncture, or the numbers dropping out because of side effects.