Table 3.
Non-invasive neuromodulation clinical trials in preventive migraine treatments
| Device type* | Studies (n) | Enrolled population (total n) |
Both aura and no aura patients included (%) | Blinded studies (n)† |
Sham-controlled studies (n) | Percentage of studies evaluating IHS-recommended endpoints | |
| Primary (%)‡ | Secondary (%)‡ | ||||||
| Electrical nerve stimulation | |||||||
| Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) | 18 | 855 | 94 | 15 | 15 | 50 | 72 |
| Non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation (nVNS) | 4 | 626 | 100 | 3 | 3 | 100 | 33 |
| External trigeminal nerve stimulation (e-TNS) | 3 | 194 | 100 | 1 | 1 | 33 | 100 |
| Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation | 2 | 76 | 100 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 50 |
| Transcutaneous supraorbital nerve stimulation | 1 | 80 | 100 | 1 | 1 | 100 | 100 |
| Auricular transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation | 1 | 58 | 100 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 100 |
| Cranial electrotherapy stimulation | 1 | 68 | 100 | 1 | 1 | 100 | 100 |
| Magnetic stimulation | |||||||
| Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) |
10 | 416 | 90 | 5 | 8 | 30 | 80 |
| Single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (sTMS) | 1 | 263 | 100 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 100 |
| Deep transcranial magnetic stimulation | 1 | 14 | 100 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 100 |
| Other | |||||||
| Caloric vestibular stimulation (CVS) | 3 | 291 | 67 | 2 | 2 | 100 | 67 |
| Intranasal kinetic oscillation stimulation | 2 | 220 | 100 | 2 | 2 | 100 | 100 |
| Auditory biofeedback | 1 | 40 | 100 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
*All references for studies in this table are listed in the online supplementary references.
†Double-blind or better.
‡Percentage of efficacy studies in which either a primary or a secondary endpoint recommended by the International Headache Society was used. Safety studies were excluded from this calculation.
IHS, International Headache Society.