The Effects of Wet-Cupping on Intensity of Headache in Migraine Sufferers

Introduction: Migraine has a collection of symptoms characterized by recurrent and severe headaches. Complementary methods can reduce the use of analgesics and might be effective in reducing pain in patients waiting for analgesics. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of wet-cupping on patients within 20 to 60 years of age diagnosed with migraine headaches.

Materials and Methods: This study was carried out before and after clinical trial; the samples were 47 patients diagnosed with migraine headaches. Inclusion criteria consisted of a confirmed diagnosis of migraine and all the patients had to be 20 years old or above. The pain severity was evaluated twice; at the beginning and after 14 days following two sessions of wet cupping with an interval of 2 weeks. The visual pain scale was evaluated in the patients. Data were analyzed by paired t-test and Fisher's exact test using SPSS, version 17.

Results: The means for pain intensity at the beginning and the end of the study were significantly decreased (P = 0.001). In most patients pain was intolerable before wet-cupping (averagely 7.79%), however, after the first (53.1%) and second (48.9%) sessions of wet-cupping, pain respectively lessened (3.15%). There was no statistically significant correlation between pain, educational level, marital status, or employment in the statistics from the beginning to the end of the study. The mean of pain reduction in women was more than in men, but the difference was not significant.

Conclusions: Findings of the research indicate that using wet-cupping as a complementary method can influence the intensity of migraine pains. Due to the free count use of complementary medicine techniques, training competent qualified persons to provide services in traditional and complementary medicine is necessary. Yet further studies on larger number of patients are suggested by the results of this pilot study as the researchers commented.