Acupuncture won't help you get pregnant
Wednesday November 12 2008
Acupuncture fails to boost the chances of women conceiving through IVF, two new studies have found.
Giving women acupuncture in conjunction with fertility treatment has proved controversial due to the existence of conflicting research on its possible benefits.
Two new studies have now found that acupuncture seems to have no effect in boosting a woman's chances of falling pregnant.
The first, carried out at a hospital in Chicago, saw 124 women split into two groups, with the first given genuine acupuncture for 25 minutes before and after IVF.
The second group received fake or "sham'' acupuncture, where needles were inserted into the body but not at known acupuncture points.
All the women were undergoing IVF with embryos grown in the laboratory for three days.
The results showed that 43.9pc of women given genuine acupuncture fell pregnant compared with 55.2pc of those receiving the sham procedure.
SHAM
A total of 76.9pc of women given genuine acupuncture guessed which group they were in compared with 24.1pc of those given sham acupuncture.
A second study, carried out at the University of Hong Kong, found that sham acupuncture appeared to work better than genuine acupuncture.
In this one, the sham acupun-cture involved using retractable needles, which look identical to real acupuncture needles.
The needles are blunt and retract into the handle when pressed on the skin, while still giving the appearance and sensation of entering the body.
A total of 370 women were given either genuine or sham acupuncture for 25 minutes before and after receiving IVF.
The overall pregnancy rate was significantly higher in the sham acupuncture group than that in the real acupuncture group (55.1pc versus 43.8pc).
No significant differences were found in rates of ongoing pregnancy and live birth between the two groups.
Dr Mark Hamilton, chairman of the British Fertility Society, said: "If patients feel better for having it [acupuncture] they should not be dissuaded and should be reassured that there isn't any harmful effect of the use of the technique.''
- Jane Kirby
