Objective To evaluate the therapeutic effect of pricking blood therapy for migraine.Methods We searched all the original papers about pricking blood therapy for migraine in common databases as the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure Database(CNKI)

Chinese Biomedical Library(CBM)

Ovid

Science Direct

Socolar

and Sci Finder(1949-2012)

Wanfang Data(1998-2012)and Foreign Medical Journal Service(FMJS

1990-2012).The original articles were searched in accordance with a pre-defined standards(simple pricking blood treatment

or the pricking blood therapy was the principal approach)

while those about other diseases(such as cerebrovascular disease

cervical spondylosis

etc.)evoked migraine

pricking blood used as a complementary therapy

case report

specialists' experience summary

reviews

surveys

news articles

animal studies were excluded.Then

a Meta-analysis was made by software Review Manager 5.1.Results A total of11clinical trial papers involving 826cases of migraine were included in the present paper.Three of them were high-quality researches

and the other eight were low quality researches.Results of Meta-analysis indicated that the therapeutic effect of the pricking blood therapy was significantly superior to that of non-bleeding therapies in relieving migraine[OR=6.23

95%CI:(4.03

9.63)

Z=8.24

P<0.00 001].However

the poor symmetry of funnel plot suggested a risk of bias.Conclusion The pricking blood therapy is effective for relieving migraine

but larger sample clinical trials

particularly randomized controlled trials are definitely needed for confirming the conclusion.