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Tertiary Care With or Without Manual Therapy for Chronic Migraine

A Pragmatic Randomised Controlled Trial on the Effectiveness of Manual Therapy as an Adjunct to Tertiary Management in Chronic Migraine

Status
Completed
Phases
NA
Study type
Interventional
Source
ClinicalTrials.gov
Registry ID
NCT03395457
Enrollment
67
Registered
2018-01-10
Start date
2018-08-03
Completion date
2019-02-28
Last updated
2019-04-16

For informational purposes only — not medical advice. Sourced from public registries and may not reflect the latest updates. Terms

Conditions

Chronic Migraine

Brief summary

The aim of this study is to determine if adding manual therapy to care as usual reduces the discomfort from chronic migraine compared to care as usual alone

Interventions

DRUGCare as usual

Application of usual pharmacological care for chronic migraine

OTHERManual Therapy

5 sessions of manual therapy over 12 weeks

Sponsors

Bournemouth University
Lead SponsorOTHER

Study design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
SINGLE (Outcomes Assessor)

Intervention model description

pragmatic randomised control trial

Eligibility

Sex/Gender
FEMALE
Age
18 Years to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
No

Inclusion criteria

Female adults 18 years of age or older with a good command of English (to enable informed consent) Existing patients with chronic migraine as diagnosed by a clinical interview with a neurologist in line with the International Classification of Headache Diagnosis criteria (ICHD) Undergoing care as usual from the neurologist

Exclusion criteria

Currently having or had manual therapy for neck, shoulder in the last six weeks. Having a condition contraindicated for manual therapy including but not limited to inflammatory disorders, severe osteoporosis and tumours. Identification of any medical 'red flags' by the neurologist including * Evidence of any central nervous system involvement for example: * Facial palsy (presence of ptosis/Horner's syndrome) * Visual disturbance (presence of blurred vision, diplopia, hemianopia) * Speech disturbance (presence of dysarthria, dysphonia, dysphasia such as expressive or receptive) * Balance disturbance (presence of dizziness, imbalance, unsteadiness, falls) * Paraesthesia (presence, location such as upper limb/lower limb, face) * Weakness (presence, location such as upper limb/lower limb) * Known major psychiatric or psychological conditions not under control

Design outcomes

Primary

MeasureTime frameDescription
Change in migraine-related disability12 weeksHeadache Impact Test (HIT6). The six-item Headache Impact Test (HIT-6) provides a global measure of adverse headache impact and is used in screening and monitoring patients. The HIT-6 items measure the adverse impact of headache on social functioning, role functioning, vitality, cognitive functioning, psychological distress and the severity of headache pain. The final HIT-6 score is obtained from simple summation of the six items and ranges between 36 and 78, with larger scores reflecting greater impact. The categories used for interpretation of impact are: little or no impact (49 or less), some impact (50-55), substantial impact (56-59), and severe impact (60-78).

Secondary

MeasureTime frameDescription
Change in Migraine Specific Quality of Life Questionnaire Score (MSQoL 2.1)12 weeksThe 14-item instrument measures how migraines affect daily functioning across three domains: Role function Restrictions (7 items assessing how migraines limit one's daily social and work-related activities); Role function prevention (4 items assessing how migraines prevent these activities); Emotional Functional (3 items assessing the emotions associated with migraines). It uses a 6-point scale: none of the time, a little bit of the time, some of the time, a good bit of the time, most of the time, and all of the time, which are assigned scores of 1 to 6, respectively. Scores are computed as a sum of item responses and rescaled from a 0 to 100 scale such that higher scores indicate better quality of life.
Headache Frequency12 weeksPercentage of participants with reduction in headache frequency of greater than 50%

Countries

United Kingdom

Outcome results

None listed

Source: ClinicalTrials.gov · Data processed: Mar 3, 2026