A Bibliometric of Trends on Acupuncture Research About Migraine: Quantitative and Qualitative Analyses

INTRODUCTION: Migraine is a common neurovascular disorder disease often characterized by episodic headaches that can develop chronic disorders. Acupuncture as a non-pharmacological therapy has been extensively used to manage migraine prevention and treatment in clinical practice. Many studies focused on acupuncture therapy for migraine, but none analyzed the publications quantitatively and qualitatively. The aim of this study is to show the recent researches and trend of advances in this field based on quantitative and qualitative analyses. METHODS: Publications related to acupuncture research about migraine were retrieved from the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection and Scopus database. The quantitative data analysis was performed to show the recent researches and trend of advances from six perspectives: annual scientific production, countries, institutions, authors, journals, and keywords. For the qualitative analysis, acupuncture research about migraine was analyzed from the top twenty most highly cited articles. RESULTS: The number of annual scientific production steadily increased with some fluctuations over the years. The country and institutions contributing most to this field are China and Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Zhao Ling was the most relevant author in this field, Linde Klaus was the highly co-cited author. The leading journal regarding the number of selected articles was “Zhongguo Zhen Jiu”. The top twenty most highly cited articles were divided into two categories: original articles and reviews. Among these two categories, original articles occupied the vast majority. Moreover, the real effectiveness of acupuncture for migraine prevention and treatment was the research frontier and hot spot. CONCLUSION: Results of our analysis indicate that the number of publications showed an overall increasing trend, demonstrating that this research field still has a promising future. In addition, more researchers will probably focus their work on the difference between verum acupuncture and usual care for preventing and treating migraine.