Migraine is one of the ten serious chronic functional disorders worldwide, with recurrent pulsatile headache as the main clinical manifestation, which is accompanied by prodromal symptoms i.e. nausea, vomiting, photophobia, aversion to sound, depression and lassitude [1]. The disease is lingering and difficultly recovered. Studies show that over 90% of migraine patients have disability due to headache attacks, and half of the cases need bed rest, which seriously affects daily work and quality of life of the patients [2]. The 2015 Global Burden of Disease Survey reported that the prevalence of migraine was 11.7% worldwide and that in China was 9.3% [3]. Migraine is listed as the seventh most disabling disease in the world by World Health Organization, and it is the first disability disease among young people under the age of 50 [4]. Migraine not only threatens the human health, but also leads to a huge public health burden [4,5]. Therefore, the prevention and treatment of migraine have always been an issue of great attention in the medical circles globally.

In recent studies, migraine induces emotional changes to different degrees, with anxiety or depression involved, which seriously affects the quality of life in patients. Emotional or anxious disorders may bring more sufferings to the patients with migraine, and increase the probability of recurrence [6]. The results of a domestic survey showed that 47.9% of migraine patients were combined with anxiety and 50.0% of the patients had depression; the incidence of sleep disorders in migraine patients was as high as 58.5% [7]. In clinic, most migraine patients are deeply troubled by both pain and emotional disorders. How to effectively control migraine and relieve emotional impairment in the patients become the research hot spot in the field of migraine treatment.

However, there is a lack of highly targeted drugs for migraine, and the overuse and dependence of analgesics may easily induce headache attacks in patients, which restricts the effectiveness of drugs to some extent. The expert consensus indicated that the dual-action drugs were preferred for comorbidity of migraine and depression. But, there are some limitations in the effect and safety of medication. For example, the sufficient evidence was obtained for the preventive treatment of migraine with flunarizine, but this drug was prohibited for depressive disorders [8]. Topiramate refers to A-class preventive drug recommended in treatment of migraine, but it may increase the occurrence of depression and the risk of recurrence [9,10]. The use of selective 5-HT reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) may aggravate migraine symptoms at the early stage of treatment [11,12]. To balance the effect and safety, non-pharmacological treatments for migraine and depressive disorders are developing rapidly in recent years. As a neuromodulation technique, electroacupuncture (EA) therapy can effectively reduce the severity of pain, disability and depression score in patients with primary headache [13]. Previous studies showed that EA had a favorable analgesic effect [14], [15], [16] and acupuncture may significantly reduce headache attacks in migraine patients [17], [18], [19]. Migraine is one of the diseases that may achieve the most favorable treatment effect through acupuncture [20,21]. Acupuncture therapy is recommended in the Chinese expert consensus on non-pharmacological treatment and prevention of migraine [22]. The experiments showed that EA was effective on relieving anxiety and depression induced by pain in rats, and 100 Hz EA had the best effect on pain-induced anxiety and depression across different frequencies. Besides, EA may relieve pain and anxiety/depression simultaneously [23,24]. However, there is no relevant report on whether there is an optimal frequency of EA for its dual-regulation in analgesia and anxiety/depression relieving. This study investigated the clinical effect and the optimal frequency of EA in migraine patients by measuring migraine attacks, days with headache, pain severity, emotional condition and quality of life. The report is as follows.