Alternative medicine 'does not help women have babies'

Published on Tuesday 9 March 2010 21:50

USING acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine to try to increase the chances of having a baby is a waste of time, experts are warning.

British Fertility Society (BFS), which represents fertility clinics, has produced new guidelines which state there is "currently no evidence" that the complementary treatments can improve the success of assisted conception.

They also found nothing to support the use of Chinese herbal remedies to help women get pregnant.

A leading expert on complementary treatments said women with fertility problems had been "misled".

The BFS advice followed a systematic review of all reliable published trials looking at acupuncture administered at the same time as fertility treatment.

Information was gathered from a total of 14 studies involving 2,670 patients.

All were published randomised controlled trials which compared patients randomly assigned to receive "real" or "fake" treatments.

The BFS experts examined the effect of acupuncture on live births, pregnancies and miscarriages.

They found it did not matter at what stage of In-Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) treatment it was carried out, acupuncture made no significant difference to any outcomes.

The authors could find no published randomised controlled trials on the effectiveness of using Chinese herbal medicines in conjunction with IVF treatment. They therefore concluded there was no evidence to support the use of these remedies either.

The British Acupuncture Council (BAcC) said it was surprised at the findings of the review, as they said it seemed to contradict a lot of the research previously published in this area.