Could acupuncture to the ear help to relieve migraines?

Acupuncture to the ear may help to lessen pain from migraines and their impact on daily life, according to new research presented today (Friday) at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) Forum 2026.

A randomised clinical trial of the treatment, called auriculotherapy, found that migraines were less painful immediately after the treatment and 30 days later, compared with the pain experienced before treatment. The impact of migraines on daily life also improved.

In addition, the researchers, led by Fernanda Belle, a physiotherapist in the Experimental Neuroscience laboratory at the University of Southern Santa Catarina (UNISUL), Palhoça, Brazil, observed changes in oxygenation levels in the prefrontal cortex of the brain over the course of the study, as measured by hemoencephalography (HEG®), which is a non-invasive technology using near-infrared spectroscopy to measure blood flow in the brain, and is an indirect measure of neural activity.

However, although these were all statistically significant improvements when comparing the 68 women in the trial before and after the treatment, there was no statistically significant difference between the 34 women receiving auriculotherapy and the 34 who received the sham treatment.

Ms Belle said: “Both groups improved over time, which may suggest that auricular stimulation, even when non-specific, can influence pain-related outcomes. However, at this stage, we cannot conclude that auriculotherapy was superior to the sham procedure.

“In the HEG® assessment, we identified changes in the average oxygenation levels of the prefrontal cortex over the course of the study, as well as differences between the groups, but the pattern of change over time was not clearly distinct between the two groups. However, the results are important because they show that it is possible to objectively monitor aspects of brain function in women with chronic migraine.

“Overall, these results are encouraging, especially because we observed improvement in clinical outcomes during follow-up, with a more consistent effect on pain in the group that received auriculotherapy. This suggests that auriculotherapy may be an interesting complementary strategy in the care of chronic migraine. We are reassessing these preliminary results in a larger group of women.”

Ms Belle has personal experience of migraines as she and members of her family suffer from them. So she wanted to explore options for improving the care for other people facing the same problem.

“Migraine is a highly prevalent and disabling condition, and many patients do not achieve adequate symptom control with conventional treatments alone. It also affects women approximately three times more often than men, probably due in part to hormonal influences, and it represents an important cause of disability,” she said.

Ms Belle recruited 68 women to her study who had had a clinical diagnosis of migraine for at least one year. All the patients experienced migraines on 15 or more days a month. Migraines were characterised by recurrent moderate to severe headaches, accompanied by other symptoms such as nausea, sensitivity to light and sound, and sometimes aura – a neurological symptom that can include visual disturbances such as flashing lights or zigzag lines.

The researchers assessed pain via the McGill Pain Questionnaire, and the impact on daily life using the Headache Impact Test (HIT-6) at three time points: before the patients started treatment, immediately after the treatment, and 30 days later.

The patients were randomly assigned to receive eight sessions of auriculotherapy or the sham treatment over eight weeks. Auriculotherapy involved the use of semi-permanent needles to stimulate specific points on the ear selected according to the protocol for migraine. Afterwards, mustard seeds were applied to the same points to maintain the stimulation until the next session. The sham procedure involved the application of semi-permanent needles to ear points that were not related to migraine, but corresponded to the fingers, wrist, knee, arm, shoulder, lung, lower limbs and spine. Mustard seeds were also applied to these points.

Patients did not know which procedure they were having, the therapist did, but the outcome assessors and those conducting the statistical analysis were blinded as to which group the women had been allocated. The researchers carried out physiological assessments in the brain using HEG®, which involves having small sensors attached to the patients’ heads to measure blood flow and oxygenation.

In the auriculotherapy group, the average pain score decreased from 50.5 before the sessions, to 44.7 immediately after the sessions, and to 41 after 30 days. This represented a reduction in pain of approximately 11% at the end of the treatment and 18% at the 30-day follow-up.

In the group receiving the sham procedure, the pain scores also decreased from 50.2 before the sessions to 44.3 immediately after the sessions and to 43.9 after 30 days, representing reductions of approximately 12% and 13%, respectively. At the 30-day follow-up, pain scores were significantly lower than before treatment in both groups. However, there was no statistically significant difference between the groups, meaning that the study could not show that auriculotherapy was superior to the sham procedure.

“We also observed a reduction in the impact of migraine on daily life,” said Ms Belle. “In the auriculotherapy group, the average HIT-6 score decreased from 66.1 before the sessions to 60.7 immediately after the sessions and to 59.5 at 30 days. In the sham group, the average score decreased from 65.8 to 59.2 after the sessions and was 59.3 at 30 days. Across both groups, this represents reductions of approximately 8% to 10%.

“Both groups improved over time, which may suggest that auricular stimulation, even when non-specific, can influence pain-related outcomes. However, at this stage, we cannot conclude that the auriculotherapy protocol was superior to the sham procedure. As this is a preliminary analysis from an ongoing study, the findings should be interpreted with caution and will be reassessed in a larger sample.”

In addition to studying auriculotherapy in a larger group of women, Ms Belle and her colleagues are also investigating the mechanisms that may explain how auriculotherapy acts in the body.

“Migraine is a complex condition involving neurovascular, autonomic and neuroinflammatory changes. The ear has strong links to networks of nerve cells, including connections with the vagus nerve, the trigeminal nerve and cervical nerves, which are involved in pain regulation, autonomic activity and inflammatory responses,” she said. “One of our hypotheses is that auriculotherapy may influence the so-called neuroimmune axis – a two-way communication system between the nervous and immune systems, modulating processes related to pain sensitisation and inflammation.”

Professor Christina Dalla from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, is chair of the FENS Forum communication committee and was not involved in the research. she said: “Migraine is a debilitating condition that can have a major impact on people’s lives, especially women’s lives. Well-conducted, randomised controlled trials of the condition are rare so, as a neuropsychopharmacologist, I am pleased that this study is being presented at the FENS Forum, as it has a rigorous methodology and careful assessment of the participants throughout the follow-up period. I look forward to seeing the results of auriculotherapy in a larger number of participants. It is important to emphasise that this a potential treatment that is complementary to existing migraine therapies, and not a replacement for them.”

Reference:

Could acupuncture to the ear help to relieve migraines?, Federation of European Neuroscience Societies, Meeting: FENS Forum 2026.