The Efficacy of Acupuncture and Fu's Subcutaneous Needling (FSN ) in Treating Chronic Tension-type Headache by fMRI

Epidemiological studies show a one-year prevalence of 30%-60% for episodic tension-type headache (TTH) and 2%-3% for chronic TTH (CTTH). Many TTH patients seek acupuncture treatment worldwide, and CTTH is one of the most commonly treated. FSN has been used to treat CTTH recently; the curative effect of it was especially good for CTTH accompanying pericranial tenderness. Nonetheless, the effectiveness of acupuncture and FSN for CTTH remains controversial. Several research results showed that symptoms of TTH improve after acupuncture treatment, but these improvements were more subjective than objective measures. So, the aim of this study is to determine the cerebral function efficacy of acupuncture and FSN in the treatment of CTTH, using Headache impact test questionnaire (HIT-6), VAS to evaluate the subjective symptom and fMRI to detect the objective cerebral function changes. Intervention: device: acupuncture; Fu's subcutaneous; placebo sham acupuncture