Acupuncture combined with other treatments may improve pregnancy and ovulation rates in infertile women, despite current predominantly low-quality evidence.
For this study, seven databases were scoured from their inceptions until the beginning of March 2025 using a combination of subject headings and free terms relating to acupuncture therapy, endometrial receptivity, infertility, and systematic review. Existing systematic reviews that examine the impact of acupuncture on endometrial receptivity in infertile women were evaluated. The research involved a pair of independent reviewers who were tasked with study selection and data extraction, with a variety of tools being used to assess aspects such as methodological quality, completeness in reporting, bias risk, and certainty of evidence.
Out of 524 records picked out for screening, 10 systematic reviews were ultimately included in the study. Although the completeness of reporting generally exceeded 70%, the research found large deficiencies in areas such as protocol registration (50%) and disclosure of funding (10%). In terms of bias risk, only one systematic review was found to contain a low risk of bias. Meanwhile, nearly all (92.72%) of the 55 outcomes evaluated were deemed to be of a low or very low quality of evidence. Despite the largely low-rated quality of evidence, descriptive analysis pointed out that pairing acupuncture with other treatments showed a potential to boost pregnancy and ovulation rates.
