Acupuncture Treatment is Associated with Reduced Dementia Risk in Patients with Migraine: A Propensity-Score–Matched Cohort Study of Real-World Data

Abstract

Background: Migraine is a recurrent headache disease that has been identified as a risk factor for subsequent dementia. The present study collected data from Taiwan’s National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD) to investigate the incidence of dementia in patients with migraine who did or did not concurrently receive acupuncture treatment. Methods: A 1:1 propensity score method was used to match an equal number of patients (N = 4813) in the acupuncture and nonacupuncture cohorts based on sex, age, migraine diagnosis year, index year, insurance amount, urbanization level, baseline comorbidities, and medication usage. We employed Cox proportional hazards models to evaluate the risk of dementia. Results: Patients with migraine who received acupuncture treatment were found to have a lower risk of dementia (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR] = 0.51, 95% CI = 0.40–0.65) than those who did not undergo acupuncture treatment. The cumulative incidence of dementia was significantly lower in the acupuncture cohort than in the nonacupuncture cohort (Log rank test, p < 0.001). This propensity score–matched cohort study demonstrated an association between acupuncture treatment and dementia development in patients with migraine in Taiwan. Conclusion: The results suggest that acupuncture treatment significantly reduced the development of dementia in patients with migraine.