Living with chronic migraine can be exhausting. People with this condition may experience severe headaches on many days each month, often together with nausea, vomiting, sensitivity to light and sound, and visual disturbances known as aura.
These repeated attacks can greatly reduce quality of life and make it difficult to work, study, or care for family members.
Doctors usually treat migraines with medicines that either prevent attacks or reduce pain once a headache begins.
While these treatments are helpful for many patients, they do not work equally well for everyone. This has encouraged scientists to investigate complementary approaches such as auriculotherapy, a treatment that stimulates specific points on the ear.
Researchers from the University of Southern Santa Catarina presented new findings on this approach at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) Forum 2026. Their randomized clinical trial involved 68 women diagnosed with chronic migraine for at least one year.
Participants were randomly assigned to receive either auriculotherapy or a sham procedure. The active treatment used tiny semi-permanent needles placed on ear points traditionally associated with migraine, followed by mustard seeds taped over the same locations.
The comparison group received the same type of needles and seeds, but they were placed on ear points not thought to be related to migraine. Because both groups received a similar-looking treatment, the participants did not know which one they were receiving.
The women attended eight treatment sessions across eight weeks. Researchers measured migraine pain before treatment, immediately after the final session, and again one month later. They also assessed how headaches affected everyday life and used brain imaging based on near-infrared light to monitor blood flow and oxygen levels in the prefrontal cortex.
Pain scores improved in both groups during the study. Migraine-related disability also became less severe. The researchers observed changes in brain oxygenation over time as well.
However, although the active treatment group showed encouraging improvements, the differences between the two groups were too small to prove that auriculotherapy was more effective than the sham treatment.
The research team believes this does not necessarily mean auriculotherapy has no effect. It is possible that general stimulation of the ear influences pain pathways, or that the study was simply too small to detect a modest benefit. Larger clinical trials are already being planned to answer these questions.
Scientists are also interested in understanding the biology behind auriculotherapy. The ear contains nerve connections that communicate with the brain and may influence pain processing, inflammation, and the body’s automatic nervous system. Future studies will explore whether these pathways explain any clinical benefits.
This study deserves attention because it used a randomized controlled design, one of the strongest methods for testing medical treatments. However, its most important finding is that both the active and sham groups improved similarly.
That means the current evidence does not show that auriculotherapy is superior to a placebo-like procedure. Until larger studies provide stronger evidence, auriculotherapy should be considered an experimental complementary treatment that may be used alongside, but not instead of, proven migraine therapies.
Source: University of Southern Santa Catarina (UNISUL).
