[A meta-analysis on pricking blood therapy for migraine]

To evaluate the therapeutic effect of pricking blood therapy for migraine.

We searched all the original papers about pricking blood therapy for migraine in common databases as the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure Database (CNKI), Chinese Biomedical Library (CBM), Ovid, Science Direct, Socolar, and Sci Finder (1949 -2012), Wanfang Data (1998-2012) and Foreign Medical Journal Service (FMJS, 1990-2012). The original articles were searched in accordance with a pre-defined standards (simple pricking blood treatment, or the pricking blood therapy was the principal approach), while those about other diseases (such as cerebrovascular disease, cervical spondylosis, etc.) evoked migraine, pricking blood used as a complementary therapy, case report, specialists' experience summary, reviews, surveys, news articles, animal studies were excluded. Then, a Meta-analysis was made by software Review Manager 5.1.

A total of 11 clinical trial papers involving 826 cases of migraine were included in the present paper. Three of them were high-quality researches, and the other eight were low quality researches. Results of Meta-analysis indicated that the therapeutic effect of the pricking blood therapy was significantly superior to that of non-bleeding therapies in relieving migraine [OR = 6.23, 95% CI: (4.03, 9.63), Z = 8.24, P < 0.00 001]. However, the poor symmetry of funnel plot suggested a risk of bias.

The pricking blood therapy is effective for relieving migraine, but larger sample clinical trials, particularly randomized controlled trials are definitely needed for confirming the conclusion.