New ear acupuncture may help reduce migraine pain

A new treatment has shown promise in reducing migraine pain with targeted ear acupuncture, opening the door to therapy that could be used as a complementary procedure alongside existing medication prescribed to those with the debilitating condition.

The research was presented by Fernanda Belle, a physiotherapist in the Experimental Neuroscience lab at Brazil’s University of Southern Santa Catarina (UNISUL), at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) Forum on July 10.

“Migraine is a highly prevalent and disabling condition, and many patients do not achieve adequate symptom control with conventional treatments alone,” Belle told the audience. “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.”

As such, the researchers conducted a relatively small trial on 68 women with a clinical diagnosis of migraine and at least 15 days per month affected by the condition. Half were assigned auriculotherapy – where specific points on the outer ear are stimulated – and the others were treated with a “sham” procedure, over eight weeks.

Pain was assessed via the McGill Pain Questionnaire, and daily life impact was measured with the Headache Impact Test (HIT-6). These surveys were conducted at baseline, immediately following treatment and once more, 30 days later.

Neither patients nor the assessors were aware of the treatment group each woman was placed in.

The researchers also performed brain physiological assessments using neurofeedback technique of hemoencephalography (HEG), measures cerebral blood flow and oxygenation via sensors attached to the head.

Those receiving the auriculotherapy treatment reported an average drop in pain from 50.5 points at baseline to 44.7 immediately after, and then 41 at 30 days. Overall, there was an average reduction in pain of around 11% after treatment and 18% by the third test.

That said, those receiving the sham procedure also saw a reduction in pain scores – from 50.2 at baseline to 44.3 immediately after, and then 43.9 at 30 days. All up, this was an average drop in pain of around 13%.

“We also observed a reduction in the impact of migraine on daily life,” said 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%.”

The study couldn’t establish a statistically significant result when the groups were compared, which pointed to another potential clue in treating migraine: using auricular stimulation in general.

“Both groups improved over time, which may suggest that auricular stimulation, even when non-specific, can influence pain-related outcomes,” Belle said. “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.

“The results are important because they show that it is possible to objectively monitor aspects of brain function in women with chronic migraine,” she added.

Auriculotherapy, in this instance, involved needles being inserted at specific spots in the outer ear thought to target migraine-specific signals. The therapists then treated the puncture spots with mustard seeds, which are thought to maintain stimulation between needle sessions.

For the sham procedure, therapists used the same needles but targeted spots that correspond to the fingers, wrist, knee, arm, shoulder, lung, lower limbs and spine, not the brain.

The team is now looking at the mechanisms involved that could help explain how auriculotherapy works on other parts of the body.

“Migraine is a complex condition involving neurovascular, autonomic and neuroinflammatory changes,” Belle said. “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.

“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,” she added.

While the study may not have been a home run, the results suggest there’s real potential in this kind of ear stimulation for migraine – and chronic pain, 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,” Belle said. “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,” she concluded.

The research was presented at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) Forum 2026.

Source: University of Southern Santa Catarina via EurekAlert!