Progress in Traditional Chinese Medicine for the Treatment of Migraine

Migraine is a recurrent disease with complex pathogenesis and is difficult to cure. At present, commercially available western migraine drugs are prone to generate side effects while treating the disease. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) avoids side effects via treatment with the principles of “treating both symptoms and root causes”, “overall adjustment”, and “treatment based on syndrome differentiation”. Three strategies of drug treatment were developed based on the syndromes, i.e., removing stasis, calming liver Yang, and reinforcing deficiency. Prescriptions of removing stasis mostly contain Chuanxiong rhizome (Chuan Xiong) to remove blood stasis by promoting blood circulation and improve properties of hemorheology, and Da Chuan Xiong Formula (DCXF) is a traditional prescription widely used in clinical practice. Prescriptions of calming liver Yang usually take Ramulus Uncariae cum Uncis (Gou Teng) as the main herb, which can calm the liver Yang via improving vasomotor function, and Tian Ma Gou Teng Decoction (TMGTD) is the representative drug. For reinforcing deficiency, Chinese doctors frequently utilize Angelica Sinensis (Dang Gui) and Astragali Radix (Huang Qi) to nourish blood and Qi in order to improve the weak state of human body; Dang Gui Bu Xue Decoction (DGBXD) is the commonly used prescription. These strategies not only treat the symptoms of diseases but also their root causes, and with the features of multiple targets, in multiple ways. Therefore, TCM prescriptions have obvious advantages in the treatment of chronic diseases such as migraine. In this review, we provided an overview of the pathogenesis of migraine and the function of representative TCM preparations in therapy of migraine as well as the mechanism of action according to effective researches, in order to provide reference and clue for further researches.