"Women undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) were more likely to get pregnant with placebo acupuncture treatments than with the real thing.Well, they don't have any such idea.
The overall pregnancy rate with placebo acupuncture was 55.1%, significantly higher than the 43.8% achieved with real acupuncture (P=0.038), Ernest Hung Yu Ng, M.D., of the University of Hong Kong, and colleagues reported online in Human Reproduction.
Dr. Ng also said that there was a trend towards higher rates of clinical pregnancy, ongoing pregnancy, live birth, and embryo implantation in the placebo acupuncture group, although the differences were not significant.
Acupuncture has become a common complement to IVF treatment, the researchers said, but measuring its effects has been difficult because designing a suitable control for acupuncture is challenging, since the treatment requires the insertion of needles."
"So in their study they used a placebo needle that looked the same as a real acupuncture needle, but it was blunt and retracted into the handle of the needle when pressed on the skin giving the appearance of shortening of the whole needle.
They said the placebo needle still gave the same pricking penetration sensation as a real needle entering the skin, and was administered by a trained acupuncturist. The same acupoints and procedures as in the real acupuncture group were applied."
Nor can it be said to be "safe" as more embryos may have died preventing pregnancy. Hence, the lower pregnancy rate.
In any event, another piece of crap alternative/complementary "treatment" bites the dust.
Good riddance.
Or maybe not.
Armed with data like this it is not unreasonable to expect that Western medicine docs will now offer acupuncture for the first one or two tries in order to increase the number of IVFs a patient will "need."
This will increase their income. The more IVFs, the more money to be made.
Caveat emptor.
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