[Effect of otopoint pellet-pressing combined with medication on clinical symptoms of migraine patients and changes of plasma 5-HT and CGRP contents]

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of CGRP (Calcitonin Gene-Related Peptide) in the context of migraine, published as a randomized controlled trial.

To investigate the short-term and long-term clinical effects of otopoint pellet-pressing combined with medication in the treatment of patients with migraine without aura and its impact on plasma 5-hydroxytryptamine(5-HT) and calcitonin gene-related peptide(CGRP) contents.

Who Took Part

Patients with migraine without aura were randomly divided into medication(control) group(n=48) and otopoint pellet-pressing plus medication (treatment) group(n=49).

The treatment was conducted for 1 month.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got CGRP (Calcitonin Gene-Related Peptide) and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

A time span of 1 month appears in the methods.

The short-term and long-term clinical effects were evaluated according to Yang and colleagues' methods, and "Guiding principles for clinical research of new TCM drugs (trial)".

The contents of plasma 5-HT and CGRP were detected by ELISA.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Acupuncture Points, Calcitonin Gene-Related Peptide, Headache, Migraine Disorders and Serotonin.

The authors tagged it with the keywords 5-hydroxytryptamine, Clinical effects, Flunarizine, Migraine without aura and Otopoint pellet-pressing.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of CGRP (Calcitonin Gene-Related Peptide) in people with migraine over 1 month.

Its findings take up roughly 6 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2019 (Zhen ci yan jiu = Acupuncture research), a journal based in China.

More context: the CGRP (Calcitonin Gene-Related Peptide) compound page, Migraine research.