Fernanda Belle has lived with migraines since she was a child. So have her mother and her sister. The pounding headaches, the nausea, the sensitivity to light — it runs through her family like an unwelcome heirloom. Now, as a physiotherapist at the University of Southern Santa Catarina in Palhoça, Brazil, Belle is searching for better ways to help others who suffer the same way she does.
In a new clinical trial, Belle and her colleagues tested a treatment called auriculotherapy — acupuncture applied to the ear — on 68 women who had been diagnosed with chronic migraines for at least one year. All of the participants experienced migraines on 15 or more days each month. Half received eight sessions of real auriculotherapy using semipermanent needles, while the other half received a sham treatment for comparison.
The results, shared at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies Forum 2026, were encouraging. Women in both groups reported feeling less pain immediately after treatment and again 30 days later. But the group receiving actual auriculotherapy showed more consistent relief from pain over time. The treatment also appeared to improve how migraines affected daily life, as measured by a standard questionnaire called the Headache Impact Test.
The researchers also used a noninvasive technique called hemoencephalography to peer into the participants' brains. They spotted changes in oxygen levels in the prefrontal cortex — an area involved in processing pain — during the study period.
Belle is quick to point out that both groups improved, so the study cannot yet prove that auriculotherapy works better than a fake treatment. But she sees the findings as a meaningful step forward.
"Overall, these results are encouraging, especially because we observed improvement in clinical outcomes during follow-up, with a more consistent effect on pain in the group that received auriculotherapy," Belle said. "This suggests that auriculotherapy may be an interesting complementary strategy in the care of chronic migraine."
That word "complementary" matters. Migraines are a leading cause of disability worldwide, and they affect women about three times more often than men, likely due in part to hormonal differences. Many patients find that standard medications do not fully control their symptoms. Belle hopes that ear acupuncture could become one more tool in the toolkit — something patients could use alongside their usual care.
The team is now expanding the study to include more women, hoping to learn whether these early signals hold up in a larger group.