'Acupuncture's no conception boost'
Updated on 13 November 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.
Now two new studies have found that acupuncture appears to have no effect in boosting a woman's chances of falling pregnant.
The first, presented at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine conference in San Francisco, was led by Irene Moy from Prentice Women's Hospital in Chicago.
A total of 124 women were 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 43.9% of women given genuine acupuncture fell pregnant compared with 55.2% of women receiving the sham procedure.
A total of 76.9% of women given genuine acupuncture guessed which group they were in compared with 24.1% of those given sham acupuncture.
A second study, published in the journal Human Reproduction, found that sham acupuncture appeared to work better than genuine acupuncture.
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