|
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.
© 2002 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
|
