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. 2018 May 15;18(1):158.
doi: 10.1186/s12906-018-2224-7.

Evidence for the use of complementary and alternative medicines during fertility treatment: a scoping review

Skye A Miner  1   2 , Stephanie Robins  2 , Yu Jia Zhu  2   3 , Kathelijne Keeren  2 , Vivian Gu  2   4 , Suzanne C Read  2 , Phyllis Zelkowitz  5   6   7
Affiliations

Evidence for the use of complementary and alternative medicines during fertility treatment: a scoping review

Skye A Miner et al. BMC Complement Altern Med. .

Abstract

Background: Complementary and alternative medicines (CAM) are sometimes used by individuals who desire to improve the outcomes of their fertility treatment and/or mental health during fertility treatment. However, there is little comprehensive information available that analyzes various CAM methods across treatment outcomes and includes information that is published in languages other than English.

Method: This scoping review examines the evidence for 12 different CAM methods used to improve female and male fertility outcomes as well as their association with improving mental health outcomes during fertility treatment. Using predefined key words, online medical databases were searched for articles (n = 270). After exclusion criteria were applied, 148 articles were analyzed in terms of their level of evidence and the potential for methodological and author bias.

Results: Surveying the literature on a range of techniques, this scoping review finds a lack of high quality evidence that complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) improves fertility or mental health outcomes for men or women. Acupuncture has the highest level of evidence for its use in improving male and female fertility outcomes although this evidence is inconclusive.

Conclusion: Overall, the quality of the evidence across CAM methods was poor not only because of the use of research designs that do not yield conclusive results, but also because results were contradictory. There is a need for more research using strong methods such as randomized controlled trials to determine the effectiveness of CAM in relation to fertility treatment, and to help physicians and patients make evidence-based decisions about CAM use during fertility treatment.

Keywords: Acupuncture; Complementary and alternative medicine; Infertility treatment; Mental health; Reproductive health; Scoping review.

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Conflict of interest statement

Author information

Skye A. Miner is a PhD student in Sociology at McGill University. As part of the CIHR Fertility Health Lab (PI: Dr. Phyllis Zelkowitz), Skye is working on creating evidence-based content on fertility treatments for the use in a mobile health application for fertility patients. Her other research interests include understanding the ethical and social issues surrounding egg donation.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Exclusion Criteria
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