Acupuncture and Infertility – The Jury is Still Out

Three separate studies on acupuncture in IVF patients were published this month in Fertility and Sterility, the premiere journal for reproductive endocrinologists. (You can’t link to full text without a logon, but abstracts are free.) One of the studies suggested that acupuncture improved IVF outcome, the other suggested that one, but not two, treatments was effective (that result made no sense to me), and the third study showed no difference. There were design flaws and issues with data interpretation that make all the results questionable.

Still, it’s good to see research on acupuncture. Hopefully, the design issues can be straightened out so that we get reliable data one way or the other.

Category: Second Opinions

3 Responses to Acupuncture and Infertility – The Jury is Still Out

  1. Love your blog. Both the food and medical aspects. It’s a regular read for me.

    Having used acupuncture, along with other things to treat infertility (but didn’t need IVF), I’d like to read these editorials. But the links don’t work for me. Could you fix, please?

  2. Chili pepper:

    Unfortunately, you need a logon to read the editorials and full text of the articles. (I get it for free at work, but not at home).

    But check out the site and the abstracts, maybe with a little googling you’ll find a full text link. If not, you can either head to your local library, or contact the authors for a free reprint via snail mail. Thye’ll be happy to send it out to you.

    And thanks for visiting!

  3. PS I fixed the links so at least you cna get the abstracts of the articles. The abstracts of the editorials were worthless, so I removed the links, but the first link is to table of contents at F&S, and you can access them all via there.

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