Acupuncture Rising VI

2002: Assisted-IVF
The establishment and development of professional organizations and affiliations helped to legitimize acupuncture and Chinese medicine in the eyes of the world. Acupuncture continues to consolidate its reputation as an effective medical modality through applications and innovations which represent scientifically-based advances in the field. One striking example of such an innovative application of acupuncture is assisted in vitro fertilization (IVF). In the United States, IVF treatment for infertility began in the 1980s, expanded during the 1990s, and became a standard of care in the 2000s. From 1985 to 2001, IVF treatments produced an average increase of one to two percent per year in positive outcomes, pregnancy or babies. This annual gain disappeared after 2001, but the effort to improve the success ratio of IVF is ongoing. Applying acupuncture to IVF programs represents an innovative effort to enhance the rate of improvement for IVF. This innovation is generally credited to Dr. W. Paulus and his colleagues, working at the Christian-Lauritzen-Institut in Ulm, Germany.
In their pioneering work, published in Fertility and Sterility in 2002, Paulus, et al.,⁵ attempted to evaluate the effect of acupuncture on the pregnancy rate in assisted reproductive therapy (ART) by comparing a group of patients receiving acupuncture treatment shortly before and after embryo transfer with a control group receiving no acupuncture. The results showed that clinical pregnancies were 42.5% in the acupuncture group, while pregnancy rate was only 26.3% in the control group. The study demonstrated that administering acupuncture before and after ART is a useful technique for improving pregnancy rate. The Paulus protocol and its clinical results provided the impetus for further studies provoking significant follow-ups in the study of acupuncture applications to IVF.
Since the 2002 publication of the clinical trials conducted by Dr. Paulus et al., and the research studies which followed, acupuncture has become the most commonly used adjunct complementary therapy among couples seeking treatment by means of in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer (IVF-ET) at fertility clinics in the United States. With its extensive use in treating infertility, acupuncture application in IVF protocols has become one of the most contested areas in clinical acupuncture research. Most of the studies done in this area suggest a positive effect when combining acupuncture with standard infertility treatment. Fertility and Sterility, an international journal for obstetricians, gynecologists, reproductive endocrinologists, urologists, basic scientists and others who treat and investigate problems of infertility and human reproductive disorders; along with the Journal of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, have become the main platform for these publications. These studies show that employing acupuncture along with IVF may provide a very promising option for couples struggling with infertility, especially if either one has been diagnosed with one of the following conditions: endometriosis, low sperm counts, problems with the uterus or fallopian tubes, problems with ovulation, antibody problems that harm sperm or eggs, the inability of sperm to penetrate or survive in the cervical mucus, or an unexplained fertility problem. Despite the positive findings of most infertility studies, non-supportive evidence appears occasionally in studies that were conducted in different ways and investigating different aspects of the IVF process.
The small paper published in 2002 by Paulus, et al. demonstrates that acupuncture can contribute to emerging medical fields that are open to exploration and innovation far beyond the already-accepted applications of acupuncture in such areas as pain management, stroke rehabilitation and the treatment of many chronic conditions. The Paulus study hints at the potential for global research efforts that will further extend the geographic reach of acupuncture and Chinese medicine, as well as expand its medical applications. Modern applications of acupuncture in diverse areas such as macular degeneration, trigger point therapy acupuncture, and sports-medicine serve as examples of only a few of the potentially-unlimited areas in which acupuncture has been found to be a useful in various countries and cultures throughout the world. Through continued individual discoveries and international collaborations, future breakthroughs will reveal the full potential this medicine has to offer as acupuncture becomes a global medicine.

 This is published in Acupuncture Today.