Characteristics of excluded studies [ordered by study ID]
| Allais 2003 | Intervention: transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation and laser therapy at acupuncture points in patients with transformed migraine |
| Annal 1992 | Intervention: transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation not at acupuncture points |
| Borglum-Jensen 1979 | Methods: random allocation unlikely |
| Bäcker 2004 | Neurophysiological study comparing migraine patients and non-migraine subjects |
| Coeytaux 2005 | Patients: patients with chronic daily headaches |
| Domzal 1980 | Design: not controlled trial |
| Dong 1994 | Intervention: acupuncture vs. acupuncture |
| Gao 1999 | Patients/intervention: randomized study of acupuncture vs. traditional Chinese drugs. Included patients with migraine with a headache history < 6 months. |
| Gottschling 2008 | Intervention/patients: RCT investigating laser acupuncture in children with migraine or tension-type headache (no presentation of subgroup results) |
| Hansen 1983 | Patients: condition chronic facial pain |
| Heydenreich 1989a | Intervention: transcutaneous electrical stimulation (TENS) at acupuncture points without skin penetration vs. TENS at sham points |
| Heydenreich 1989b | Randomized study of acupuncture, transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation at acupuncture points and medication.Reason for exclusion:medication (dihydroergotamine and ipraazochrom) considered contraindicated today. Insufficiently reported, hardly credible (no dropouts reported in spite of inadequate medication and long duration) trial. |
| Ho 1999 | Intervention: laser acupuncture (no skin penetration) vs. sham laser |
| Johansson 1991 | Patients: condition facial pain |
| Junnilla 1983 | Patients: study included patients with various chronic pain syndromes, including headache; however, headache patients were not presented as a separate subgroup, but only together with all other patients |
| Kubiena 1992 | Rigorously planned RCT comparing acupuncture and sham in patients with migraine. Reason for exclusion: trial uninterpretable due to extreme attrition/missing data (diary data for only 15 of 30 patients after completion of treatment and for only 4 patients at follow-up). |
| Lavies 1998 | Intervention/patients: laser acupuncture (no skin penetration) vs. sham laser in patients with migraine or tension-type headache |
| Lehmann 1991 | Insufficiently reported study with highly questionable validity (inconsistent reporting on proceedings in case of lack of response; extremely positive results claimed; no report on dropouts in a study lasting 18 months) comparing acupuncture, electro-acupuncture and propranolol in patients with “frequent”migraine. Reasons for exclusion: diagnosis of migraine not compatible with an average of 22 migraine days per months; strong doubts about validity. |
| Lenhard 1983 | Intervention: acupuncture + naloxone vs. acupuncture + placebo |
| Liguori 2000 | Study comparing acupuncture and medical treatment with highly questionable validity. Reasons for exclusion: 1) Doubts whether the study is truly randomized (only 2 of the 4 study centers used acupuncture); 2) It is stated that acupuncture patients never treated attacks with medication - this seems hardly credible with a study duration of 12 months; 3) no mentioning of dropouts and protocol deviations - hardly credible for a observation period of 12 months with daily documentation; 4) medication therapy highly different in two centers. |
| Loh 1984 | Patients: RCT including both patients with migraine and tension-type headache without reporting results for subgroups |
| Lundeberg 1988 | Report of a series of studies with RCTs on other pain syndromes; only uncontrolled trial in headache patients |
| Melchart 2003 | Patients/outcomes: RCT in acute migraine |
| Melchart 2004 | Intervention: Acupuncture provided together with other Chinese treatments (herbal medicine, Qi Gong or Tuina) compared to waiting list |
| Okazaki 1975 | Intervention: acupuncture vs. acupuncture |
| Pikoff 1989 | Patients/outcome measures: study on acute headache |
| Pintov 1997 | Design: Controlled trial with alternating allocation (not truly randomized) to deep acupuncture vs. sham (unclear whether this was superficial needling at the same or other points) in children with migraine |
| Shi 2000 | Patients: patients with “therapy-resistant headache” (exact headache diagnoses not reported) |
| Sold-Darseff 1986 | Methods: probably not randomized, only a subgroup had headache |
| Sun 2004 | Patients/outcome measures: RCT in migraine patients (“duration of illness over three months in all groups, and the longest was 12 months”) treated “in the acute period” for 10 days with daily acupuncture or indomethacin |
| Tekeoglu 1995 | Intervention: electroacupuncture vs. music sound electroacupuncture |
| Turk 1990 | Methods/intervention/outcomes: unclear method of allocation/acupuncture vs. laser-acupuncture/follow-up < 4 weeks |