Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Case Reports
. 2019 Apr 3;20(3):118-121.
doi: 10.1002/jgf2.242. eCollection 2019 May.

Successful treatment of intractable menstrual migraine with the traditional herbal medicine tokishakuyakusan

Tetsuya Akaishi  1   2 , Shin Takayama  1   3 , Minoru Ohsawa  1   3 , Akiko Kikuchi  1   3 , Ryutaro Arita  1   3 , Ichiro Nakashima  4 , Masashi Aoki  2 , Tadashi Ishii  1   3
Affiliations
Case Reports

Successful treatment of intractable menstrual migraine with the traditional herbal medicine tokishakuyakusan

Tetsuya Akaishi et al. J Gen Fam Med. .

Abstract

In this report, we present the successful treatment of five consecutive cases of premenopausal women suffering from severe menstrual migraine with tokishakuyakusan (TSS). Two patients were complicated by tension-type headache (TTH), and another patient was by medication overuse headache (MOH). The effects of triptans were limited in all of them. After starting TSS, they showed dramatic improvement in the severity and frequency of their attacks. The patients with TTH and MOH also showed dramatic improvement in their symptoms. TSS could be a promising alternative choice for patients with intractable menstruation-related headaches that are refractory to conventional treatments, including triptans.

Keywords: herbal medicine; intractable headache; menstrual migraine; tokishakuyakusan; triptan.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

ST, MO, AK, and TI belong to the department of kampo medicine in Tohoku University Hospital, which receives grant from Tsumura and Co., Tokyo, Japan.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Strength of headache and the frequency of taking triptans in Case 2. An association between the headache and female hormones was apparent from the shown clinical course. NRS, numerical rating scale for pain; PIH, pregnancy‐induced hypertension; LEP, low‐dose estrogen‐progestin; TSS, tokishakuyakusan
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Kornstein SG, Parker AJ. Menstrual migraines: etiology, treatment, and relationship to premenstrual syndrome. Curr Opin Obstet Gynecol. 1997;9(3):154–9. - PubMed
    1. Pan JC, Tsai YT, Lai JN, Fang RC, Yeh CH. The traditional Chinese medicine prescription pattern of patients with primary dysmenorrhea in Taiwan: a large‐scale cross sectional survey. J Ethnopharmacol. 2014;152(2):314–9. - PubMed
    1. Koyama T, Hagino N, Cothron AW, Saito M. Effect of toki‐shakuyaku‐san on ovulation induced by human menopausal gonadotropin in rats. Am J Chin Med. 1988;16(3–4):169–72. - PubMed
    1. Irahara M, Yasui T, Tezuka M, Ushigoe K, Yamano S, Kamada M, et al. Evidence that Toki‐shakuyaku‐san and its ingredients enhance the secretion of a cytokine‐induced neutrophil chemoattractant (CINC/gro) in the ovulatory process. Methods Find Exp Clin Pharmacol. 2000;22(10):725–30. - PubMed
    1. Terauchi M, Hiramitsu S, Akiyoshi M, Owa Y, Kato K, Obayashi S, et al. Effects of the kampo formula tokishakuyakusan on headaches and concomitant depression in middle‐aged women. Evidence‐based complementary and alternative medicine : eCAM. 2014;2014:593560. - PMC - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources