Could Alternative Medicine Hurt Women's Fertility?

Women who used alternative medicines and therapies were 20% less likely to get pregnant through one course of in-vitro fertilization than women who didn't, Danish researchers report. But while the results were clear, the conclusion isn't.

The unpublished results, announced at a meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology, were based on the experiences of 800 Danish women, 261 of whom had used herbal supplements, acupuncture and other non-mainstream treatments.

Twenty percent seems like a big number, and the researchers warned that alternative therapies may be less benign than thought. Indeed, no therapy should simply be assumed safe. But the difference in pregnancy rates quite possibly had other explanations.

"The important question is whether the chicken or the egg came first,"
said Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine at Exeter
University, who was not connected to Boivin's work.

"Those women who are more prone to stress and have more health problems are more likely to try complementary medicine," he said. "So complementary medicine could only be a marker, and not the cause, of stress or lower success rates." Ernst said similar results had been found in looking at the use of alternative therapies in cancer patients.

Indeed, the researchers didn't even disentangle the different alternative therapies used by women in the study, producing this gem of a quote:

"We have no idea why pressing on your feet could be bad for getting pregnant," Boivin said.

Ironic, isn't it: supporters of non-mainstream medicine are criticized for not producing clinical proof, but when research critical of the treatments comes out, it's full of holes. The common-sense takeaway message: don't jump to conclusions.

Some Therapies May Hurt Pregnancy Chance [Associated Press]
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Image: Michael*