Women who use alternative therapies during fertility treatment are less likely to become pregnant, according to new research carried out by scientists at Cardiff University.
Out of 800 women undergoing IVF over the course of a year it was found that those who used alternative therapies had a 30 per cent lower pregnancy rate than those who relied just on IVF. Psychologist Dr Jacky Boivin, speaking at the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Lyon, France, said;
"Our findings do not allow us to make a direct causal link between complementary and alternative therapy use and pregnancy rate," she said. "It may be that complementary therapies diminish the effectiveness of medical interventions, as has been shown in previous research. Or it may simply be that persistent treatment failure encourages women to seek out complementary and alternative therapies because they are more willing to try anything to get pregnant."
Around half of the women used reflexology or herbal medicines, 20 per cent used acupuncture and 10 per cent used other therapies. Four in ten used more than one type of therapy. Professor Edzard Ernst, director of complementary medicine at the Peninsula Medical School in Plymouth, said the results were inconclusive because it is not clear what is cause and what is effect.
He said, "Women who are more distressed because of personality or medical history try more things including complementary medicine. Because they are more distressed or have a more complicated medical history, they have a lower fertility rate. It does not say anything about the effectiveness of complementary therapy in fertility treatment. The importance of this particular research for clinicians is that use of complementary medicine could act as a marker for patients needing more attention."
July 2007
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