ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Neurol.
Sec. Headache and Neurogenic Pain
This article is part of the Research TopicManagement of migraine in patients with coexistent conditions or comorbidities: from classic to novel therapiesView all 13 articles
Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation for Vestibular Migraine in Women of Reproductive Age: A Retrospective Propensity Score-Matched Study
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Neurology, the People's Hospital of Rugao, NanTong, China
- 2Department of Otolaryngology, the People's Hospital of Rugao, NanTong, China
- 3Department of Neurology, Yangxian People‘s Hospital, Hanzhong, China
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Background: Vestibular migraine (VM) substantially impairs quality of life, particularly in women of reproductive age. While repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) has emerged as a promising non-invasive neuromodulation therapy, its efficacy for VM remains underexplored. Methods: In this retrospective study, we analyzed data from 83 women of reproductive age diagnosed with VM who were treated between June 2022 and October 2024. After propensity score matching, 34 patients who received rTMS combined with pharmacotherapy were compared with 34 patients who received pharmacotherapy alone. Results: At the 3-month follow-up, the rTMS group demonstrated a significant reduction in headache-related impact compared to the control group, as measured by HIT-6 (46.50[43.00, 52.50] vs. 53.50[50.00, 58.75], P-holm < 0.001), with a moderate effect size (r = 0.49, 95% CI: 0.31, 0.67). In contrast, no significant between-group differences were observed in pain intensity (VAS: 4.00[3.00, 4.00] vs. 4.00[4.00,5.00], P-holm = 0.054) or dizziness handicap (DHI-T: 23.82 ± 3.39 vs. 25.88 ± 4.26, P-holm = 0.09). Within-group analyses revealed that the rTMS group exhibited continued improvement over time across both pain and vertigo measures. Conclusion: These findings indicate that as an adjunct to pharmacotherapy, rTMS offers significant benefits in alleviating pain-related functional impairment over a 3-month period in women of reproductive age with VM, although it confers no additional advantage over pharmacotherapy alone in reducing pain intensity or vertigo symptoms.
Keywords: neuromodulation therapy, Propensity score matching, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, vestibular migraine, Women of reproductive age
Received: 30 Oct 2025; Accepted: 12 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhu, Fan, Ma, Fan, Mao, Xiao, Xu and Ge. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jianjian Zhu
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