Female Infertility
Acupuncture Helps Some to Conceive ... Ancient Art Improves Success Rates in Fertility Treatment

According to recent research, Acupuncture could help women undergoing fertility treatment conceive babies, German researchers said on Tuesday. Scientists said they increased the success rate by nearly 50 percent in women undergoing in vitro fertilization, the procedure commonly known as the “test-tube” baby treatment. The researchers, led by Dr. Wolfgang Paulus and colleagues at the Christian-Lauritzen-Institut in Ulm, Germany, said they do not know why acupuncture works and plan more studies.

 “Acupuncture seems to be a useful tool for improving pregnancy rate after assisted reproductive techniques,” they wrote in a report published in the journal Fertility and Sterility. “The analysis shows that the pregnancy rate for the acupuncture group is considerably higher than for the control group (42.5 percent versus 26.3 percent),” they wrote. “If these findings are confirmed, they may help us improve the odds for our (in vitro fertilization) patients’ achieving pregnancy,” Dr. Sandra Carson, president-elect of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, which publishes the journal, said in a statement. Working with a team at the Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine at Tongji Hospital in Wuhan, China, Paulus and colleagues tested 160 women undergoing in vitro fertilization. Half received the standard in vitro fertilization, while half were given acupuncture treatments before and after.

“We chose acupuncture points that relax the uterus according to the principles of traditional Chinese medicine,” they wrote. They said acupuncture can affect the autonomic nervous system — involved in the control of muscles and glands — and thus, theoretically, should make the lining of the uterus more receptive to receiving an embryo.

Energy Flow

Acupuncture is based on Chinese theories of energy flow through the body, or qi. The idea is that there are more than 2,000 acupuncture points on the human body, which connect with 20 pathways called meridians. Western scientists say these meridians do not directly correspond to nerve or blood circulation pathways.

But research shows that natural painkillers called opioids may be released into the central nervous system during acupuncture treatment. Acupuncture has been scientifically shown to work to help patients with nausea caused by anesthetics during surgery or caused by chemotherapy and to relieve dental pain. It may also help relieve headache, menstrual cramps, tennis elbow and other painful conditions.

The Chinese and German team used needles to stimulate meridians involving the spleen, stomach and colon to “result in better blood perfusion and more energy in the uterus.” They also stimulated points aimed at relaxing the patients. Researchers said they did not know why the treatment worked. “To rule out the possibility that acupuncture produces only psychological or psychosomatic effects, we plan to use a placebo needle set as a control in a future study,” they wrote. In such studies, people have needles inserted like acupuncture, but not at the points specified by acupuncture experts.

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