Acupuncture of no benefit for IVF women, study says

ACUPUNCTURE doesn’t help women undergoing IVF to have a baby, a landmark study has found.

But the Australian Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine Association (AACMA) rejects suggestions the industry promotes false hope for women desperate to have a baby, saying the therapy still has many physical and psychosocial benefits.

A study of 848 women across 16 IVF centres in Australia and New Zealand between 2011 to 2015 found no difference in birth rates in women who received regular acupuncture, compared to those who received “sham” acupuncture.

The sham treatment involved placing a non-invasive needle with a blunt tip away from true acupuncture points.

There was a 0.5 per cent difference in the rate of women who received acupuncture and had a live birth or births (18.3 per cent, or 74 women) compared to those given the fake alternative (17.8 per cent, or 72 women). “These findings do not support the use of acupuncture to improve the rate of live births among women undergoing IVF,” the authors concluded.

AACMA president Waveny Holland questioned the efficacy of the study, claiming the use of sham acupuncture as the control was misleading because it suggests that it’s “fake”.

The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.