SynthesisBulletin of the World Health Organization2025
Acupuncture recommendations for migraine in headache treatment guidelines: a systematic review.
Synthesis in Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Acupuncture recommendations for migraine in headache treatment guidelines: a systematic review.Bulletin of the World Health Organization · 2025Pooled it
- Acupuncture modulates migraine-related neural and neuroendocrine regulatory pathways.The journal of headache and pain · 2026Review
- Acupuncture versus Sham Acupuncture for Migraine without Aura: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Journal of pain research · 2026Review
- From clinical records to community care: using real-world evidence in Ayurveda.Frontiers in medicine · 2026Article
- Traditional medicine and its contributions to science, health equity and sustainability.Bulletin of the World Health Organization · 2025Article
- EEG microstate responses of migraine patients to transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation.Frontiers in neurologyArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
14 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Objective: To evaluate the quality of global headache guidelines regarding the recommendation of acupuncture for migraine treatment. Methods: We searched 31 electronic databases and 15 guideline repositories from inception to October 2024, without language restrictions. We identified 25 guidelines meeting our inclusion criteria, and evaluated these for methodological, reporting and recommendation quality using the Appraisal of Guidelines Research and Evaluation (AGREE) II instrument, Reporting Items for Practice Guidelines in Healthcare (RIGHT) checklist, and AGREE Recommendations Excellence (REX) tool, respectively. We present our findings using descriptive statistics, and assess interrater reliability using intraclass correlation coefficients. Findings: Of the 25 guidelines analysed, we observed that 40.0% (10/25) recommended acupuncture and 32.0% (8/25) provided conditional recommendations. Of the 18 guidelines recommending acupuncture, 77.8% (14/18) lacked procedural details; only 22.2% (4/18) specified treatment frequency and 16.7% (3/18) described needling techniques. We found that methodological quality was suboptimal, with the domain clarity of presentation scoring highest (75.2%) and applicability lowest (20.3%). We noted that reporting quality was inadequate, particularly in the review and quality assurance domain (18.8%). Only 4.0% (2/25) of guidelines provided high-quality acupuncture recommendations. The 2023 World Federation of Acupuncture-Moxibustion Societies guideline achieved the highest overall quality. Conclusion: Current global headache guidelines provide limited and inadequately detailed recommendations for acupuncture in migraine treatment, constrained by low methodological quality. Strict adherence to standardized reporting, methodological rigour and recommendation frameworks is essential to generate high-quality evidence, guide clinical decision-making and enhance the global acceptance of acupuncture therapy for migraine.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.