Acupuncture and herbal medicine for female infertility: an overview of systematic reviews
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Authors
Lee, Jang Won
Hyun, Min Kyung
Kim, Hye Jin
Kim, Dong-Il
Issue Date
2020-11-18
Type
Article
Language
en_US
Keywords
Acupuncture , Herbal Medicine , Female Infertility , Systematic Review
Alternative Title
Abstract
Background:
Acupuncture and herbal medicine have been used as additional treatments for infertility or as an adjuvant treatment of assisted reproductive technology (ART) in infertility. Many systematic reviews (SRs) and meta-analyses (MA) have been published. This paper reviews the SRs and MA of acupuncture and herbal medicine on infertility to provide evidence for clinical decision making.
Methods:
A comprehensive literature search of SRs and MA for the effects of acupuncture and herbal medicine on infertility was conducted using nine databases. Two independent reviewers extracted the data of the selected SR and MA and evaluated their methodological quality using the ‘Assessment of multiple systematic reviews 2 (AMSTAR2)’.
Results:
Twenty-one studies were included in this analysis. Eight studies were published in China, and three studies each were published in the USA, UK, and Australia. Conflicting evidence on the efficacy of acupuncture for infertile women has been reported. Herbal medicine for infertile women undergoing ART, women with anovulation, and women with polycystic ovary syndrome helped improve the clinical pregnancy rate. The methodological quality of SRs and MAs evaluated by AMSTAR 2 was low or very low because the protocol or list of excluded studies were omitted.
Conclusion:
Herbal medicine tended to be effective in infertility, but acupuncture had low evidence of an effect on infertility. The methodological quality of the published SRs and MAs was underestimated because AMSTAR2 is a more rigorous assessment tool than the previous version.
Description
Citation
Lee, J. W., Hyun, M. K., Kim, H. J., & Kim, D. I. (2021). Acupuncture and herbal medicine for female infertility: an overview of systematic reviews. Integrative medicine research, 10(3), 100694. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.imr.2020.100694
Publisher
Integrative Medicine Research