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

BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Skye A MinerPhyllis Zelkowitz

Abstract

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. 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. 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. Overall, the quality of t...Continue Reading

References

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Citations

Jul 2, 2020·The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine : Research on Paradigm, Practice, and Policy·Carie Muntifering Cox, Courtney L Johnson
Feb 7, 2021·Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice·Amal AkourAla'a B Al-Tammemi
Mar 6, 2021·Integrative Medicine Research·Jang Won LeeDong-Il Kim
Feb 26, 2021·International Quarterly of Community Health Education·Mohsen Azimi-NezhadMohammad Vahedian-Shahroodi
May 15, 2021·Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine : ECAM·Jiaxing FengShoujuan Luo

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