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Acupuncture and infertility
10 Mar 10
The BBC reports today that a British Fertility Society review of 14 trials of acupuncture used to boost IVF treatment showed no effect, although no harm either.
The underlying picture is complex, with many different methods of applying the treatment used in different trials.
The BBC writes 'Professor Adam Balen, head of BFS's policy and practice committee, said patients needed to be aware of the lack of evidence on acupuncture and herbs before signing up to a course of treatment.
There was a "a great deal of discrepancy", he added, in the way in which the trials were designed and the type of acupuncture used.
"Any future randomised controlled trials in this area need to ensure that they use a standardised acupuncture method, have a large sample size and include adequate controls to account for any placebo effects."'
In the meantime, couples will have to weigh up whether they prefer to 'try acupuncture anyway' - or use the money for more rounds of IVF
FIH today commented on the story in a press release:
'The evidence as to whether acupuncture is of benefit in assisted conception – so-called test tube babies – is unclear. There have been a small number of relatively small scale trials whose results are inconclusive. Because the trial designs are so different, it is not feasible to compare them with one another. While the meta-analysis recently quoted by the British Fertility Society (BFS) suggests there is no positive evidence for acupuncture in treating infertility, a similar review published by the respected Cochrane Collaboration in 2008, found that there was benefit when acupuncture was carried out on the day of embryo transfer, but not when it was carried out later.
The BFS dismissal of traditional Chinese herbal medicine is surprising. It appears they have not consulted all the respected international Cochrane database. There is a Cochrane Centre in China that publishes Chinese language scientific research carried out there. This does not appear to have been included in the review quoted by the British Fertility Society.'
Comments
Richard Lockwood
March 10, 2010
So, no evidence of it working. None. None at all. So, why bother promoting or defending it? It doesn't work. Leave it and move on.