Acupuncture in the Treatment of Infertility due to Luteal Phase Defect: A Meta-Analysis

Background: To systematically evaluate the clinical effect and safety of acupuncture (AC) in the treatment of patients with infertility due to luteal phase defects. Methods: We conducted a systematic review and meta-analyses of AC’s clinical outcome and safety in treating infertility due to luteal phase defects. We searched for databases, including PubMed, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, EMBASE, CNKI, CBM, Wanfang, Weipu, and VIP, and retrieved articles from inception to February 28, 2022. We used the STATA 12.0 software to conduct the meta-analyses. Egger’s test was conducted to assess publication bias. Results: A total of 9 randomized controlled trials involving 638 eligible patients were included in our study. The results of the meta-analysis showed that compared with a group of drug treatment, AC-based combination therapeutic regimes can significantly improve total effective rate (TER; odds ratio (OR) = 1.56, 95% confidence interval (95% CI): 1.11–2.18, p = 0.010), and pregnancy rate (PR; OR = 1.60, 95% CI: 1.20–2.13, p = 0.001) for patients with infertility due to luteal phase defect. Significant differences were observed in serum progesterone (P4) (standardized mean difference (SMD) = 1.52, 95% CI: 1.06–1.98, p = 0.000) and estradiol (E2) (SMD = 0.96, 95% CI: 0.47–1.45, p = 0.000) levels between AC-based combination therapeutic regimes group and the drug treatment group. Conclusions: AC combined with other drug treatments for luteal phase deficiency (LPD) infertility therapy can significantly increase the TER and PR and improve the serum P4 and estradiol (E2) levels of patients compared to drug treatment alone. Considering the low quality of the included studies, the results of this meta-analysis still need to be carefully interpreted. Well-designed clinical studies with large sample sizes are still required to confirm our results. Registration: The study has been registered on https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/ (registration number: CRD42023472727).