Insights & Discussion
Currently, acupuncture is considered to be a safe, helpful, and available alternative option for patients who have not responded to or complied with conventional pharmacotherapy.
The authors conducted an exhaustive review of existing literature exploring the use of acupuncture to address migraine headaches in children. This review encompassed understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of acupuncture, studies on adult headaches, pediatric headache studies, consideration of acupuncture's safety, and its application in other health conditions present in children.
The findings of this review suggested that acupuncture emerges as a safe and effective treatment option for migraine in children. Evidence proposes that it can be effectively integrated into the primary treatment regime to reduce the child's discomfort and pain. The effectiveness of acupuncture comes with the added advantage of being safe, with negligible risks, especially important when dealing with young patients. These insights support acupuncture to be seriously considered as an auxiliary treatment strategy for migraines in children.
Discover Related Insights
Honey potentially has superior results than cough medication or placebo in curtailing symptoms and enhancing sleep in children with acute cough.
2023 European Journal of Pediatrics Honey for acute cough in children — a systematic review Kuitunen I, Renko M
Systematic Review Cough Honey Sleep
Methodology:
This targeted review leveraged multiple databases, such as PubMed, Scopus, CENTRAL, CINAHL, and Web of Science, to extract relevant trials relating to honey's usage in treating acute child cough. By applying a systematic approach, the emphasis was on randomized controlled trials featuring children. To ensure the results' credibility, payment was done for risk-of-bias as well as the quality of the evidence. The studies were not combined owing to the absence of essential information; instead, conclusions provided a range of noticed effects for principal results.
Discussion of results:
Following rigorous screening of almost four hundred papers, a select ten were incorporated. Significant variability in biases was noticed, with two studies possessing a high risk-of-bias and six inviting some concerns. The evidence, though of low to very low quality, indicated honey's potential superiority over placebo/no treatment and cough medication, both in reducing cough frequency and improving sleep quality.
A 6-week course of acupuncture proves as effective as 6-month drug prophylaxis for migraines, with specific Chinese point selection and stimulation appearing less important.
2022 Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics Role of acupuncture in the treatment of migraine Endres HG, Diener HC, Molsberger A
Review Article Headache & Migraine Migraine
The study began by revisiting previous research on acupuncture as a treatment for headache, finding shortcomings in many of these studies. It explored the influence of acupuncture on migraine and how it potentially functions. The methodology involved running several large, randomized trials comparing the use of acupuncture to conventional prophylactic drug treatments, spanning a time frame of six weeks to six months, respectively.
In the discussion of the results, it was found that the 6-week acupuncture treatment was just as effective in treating migraines as the 6-month drug treatment. Specific attributes of the acupuncture treatment, such as the selection and stimulation of Chinese points and the depth of the needles, were found to have lower significance than traditionally believed. The paper therefore suggested the integration of acupuncture into existing migraine therapy protocols.
True acupuncture over an eight-week period is effective for reducing the frequency of chronic tension-type headache.
2022 Neurology Acupuncture for Patients With Chronic Tension-Type Headache Zheng H, Gao T, Zheng QH, Lu LY, Hou TH, Zhang SS, et al.
Randomised Controlled Trial Headache & Migraine
In a randomized controlled trial, 218 participants diagnosed with chronic tension-type headache were divided into an intervention group and a control group, with the study conducted from June 2017 to September 2020. The intervention group received 20 true acupuncture sessions over 8 weeks, where each acupuncture point was needled to achieve a sensation, each session lasting 30 minutes. The control group received the same number of superficial acupuncture sessions, serving as a make-believe treatment, where the needling avoided inducing sensations at the acupuncture points.
The results showed a trend towards greater effectiveness of true acupuncture. By week 16, the 'responder rate' (participants reporting at least a 50% reduction in monthly headache days) was higher in the true acupuncture group compared to the superficial acupuncture group, with similar results by week 32. These findings suggest that true acupuncture, involving the creation of a sensation at each acupuncture site, can noticeably reduce chronic tension-type headaches. This was observed without noting significant adverse events, hinting towards the safety of the procedure.
Honey is effective in treating coughs in children above 12 months.
2022 Cureus Journal of Medical Science Comparing the Effectiveness of Honey Consumption With Anti-Cough Medication in Pediatric Patients: A Systematic Review Mashat GD, Hazique M, Khan KI, Ramesh P, Kanagalingam S, Ul Haq Z, et al.
Systematic Review Cough Honey
The researchers undertook a systematic review of literature across five databases, using a Medical Subject Heading strategy, keywords, and defined inclusion and exclusion criteria to identify relevant studies. This review incorporated a range of study types, including systematic reviews, meta-analyses, randomized controlled trials, observational studies and cross-sectional studies. Those articles without a clear methodology section were excluded. The quality of the remaining literature was appraised using a specific checklist.
Following the review, it was found that honey is effective in treating coughs in children older than 12 months. Cold and cough medications were also found to be safe, if given at therapeutic doses. However, a note of caution was highlighted for the use of these medications in children under two years, as fatalities have been recorded in some cases; although further studies are recommended to establish a clear safety profile.
Parent-administered pediatric tuina is effective at reducing core symptoms of ADHD in preschool children and improves child appetite and sleep quality.
2022 Phytomedicine Parent-administered pediatric Tuina for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms in preschool children: A pilot randomized controlled trial embedded with a process evaluation Chen SC, Yu J, Wang HS, Wang DD, Sun Y, Cheng HL, et al.
Randomised Controlled Trial ADHD Appetite Meridian Massage
This research involved a two-arm, parallel, open-label, pilot Randomized Controlled Trial, where 64 participants were assigned to two separate groups. Parents in the first group attended an online course teaching them pediatric tuina for ADHD, which they would then apply to their children at home. The second group of parents went through online training about a progressive muscle relaxation exercise and engaged in interactive physical activities with their children at home. Both groups carried out their respective interventions every other day for two month, each session lasting at least 20 minutes. The project measured the rate of recruitment, consent, participant adherence, retention and any adverse events.
Upon investigation, both groups demonstrated improvements, with moderate effect size within each group. This was reflected in improvements in core hyperactivity and impulsivity symptoms. Parents also noticed positive changes in their children’s eating habits, sleep quality, and overall parent-child relationship. No serious issues were reported in relation to implementing the parent-administered pediatric tuina or from the interactive physical activity sessions.
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