More Tooth Fairy Science: Acupuncture does not improve in vitro fertilization success rates [View all]

[SidDithers]

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2013/07/03/more-tooth-fairy-science-acupuncture-does-not-improve-in-vitro-fertilization-success-rates-no-matter-what-acupuncturists-say/

More Tooth Fairy Science: Acupuncture does not improve in vitro fertilization success rates, no matter what acupuncturists say

Here we go again.

Oh, well. These things come in waves, and sometimes I have theme weeks. Right now, this week appears to be developing into a week of quackademic medicine involving dubious acupuncture studies. Yesterday, it was acupuncture for lymphedema after breast cancer surgery, a study coming right about what is rapidly becoming the Barad-dûr of cancer quackademia, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. How a hospital that is so awesome in every other way can have such a blind spot bigger than the Eye of Sauron, I don’t know, but it does, and the result is a steady stream of embarrassing forays into quackademic medicine like yesterday’s.

Of course, there is one institution that far surpasses even MSKCC in the power of its quackademic woo, and that is the University of Maryland, home to Brian Berman, king of acupuncture quackademia, and my Google Alerts did there job and, well, alerted me to a new meta-analysis published online late last week in the Journal of Human Reproduction Update. Berman is the corresponding author (of course!), and a research associate by the name of Eric Manheimer is the lead author, and together with other colleagues, they have produced yet another fine analysis of tooth fairy medicine entitled, The effects of acupuncture on rates of clinical pregnancy among women undergoing in vitro fertilization: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Now, remember all the things I said about the utter lack of prior plausibility for acupuncture for treating lymphedema? You remember, how there’s no plausible biological mechanism that would lead one even to suspect that sticking needles into parts of the body completely unrelated to the physiological mechanisms that result in lymphedema after mehanical interruption of regional lymphatics by surgery? All of that goes double—nay, triple!—for using acupuncture for infertility and improving the pregnancy rates after in vitro fertilization (IVF). I mean, seriously. Think about it. How on earth would sticking needles into the skin improve the odds of conception after this procedure? It wouldn’t, and it doesn’t. That doesn’t stop acupuncturists and acupuncture apologists from heavily selling acupuncture as somehow managing to do just that, against all physiology and reality.

So here’s how the systematic review is being sold:

Acupuncture, when used as a complementary or adjuvant therapy for in vitro fertilization (IVF), may be beneficial depending on the baseline pregnancy rates of a fertility clinic, according to research from the University of Maryland School of Medicine. The analysis from the University of Maryland Center for Integrative Medicine is published in the June 27 online edition of the journal Human Reproduction Update.

“Our systematic review of current acupuncture/IVF research found that for IVF clinics with baseline pregnancy rates higher than average (32 percent or greater) adding acupuncture had no benefit,” says Eric Manheimer, lead author and research associate at the University of Maryland Center for Integrative Medicine. “However, at IVF clinics with baseline pregnancy rates lower than average (less than 32 percent) adding acupuncture seemed to increase IVF pregnancy success rates. We saw a direct association between the baseline pregnancy success rate and the effects of adding acupuncture: the lower the baseline pregnancy rate at the clinic, the more adjuvant acupuncture seemed to increase the pregnancy rate.”

It’s hard not to be a bit snarky here and say that if your clinic is doing well with its pregnancy rate, then obviously you don’t need mumbo-jumbo. However, if you’re not doing so well, maybe some bread and circuses will help.

Always good stuff from Orac.

Sid