Modern Clinical Research on Acupuncture Treatment for Infertility

Abstract

Infertility has become a significant global reproductive health issue, with its incidence rate showing an increasing trend with advancing age. Although modern medicine has made certain progress in treating etiological factors such as ovulation disorders, fallopian tube abnormalities, and endometriosis, challenges remain including suboptimal therapeutic outcomes in some patients, high treatment costs, and adverse drug reactions, necessitating the exploration of safe and effective alternative or complementary therapies. Acupuncture, as a traditional therapy with a millennia-long application history, demonstrates unique advantages in infertility treatment. This article systematically reviews the modern clinical research progress on acupuncture for infertility, summarizing clinical applications and efficacy evidence from various acupuncture modalities, including simple needling, electroacupuncture, warm needle therapy, moxibustion, and combined acupuncture with traditional Chinese or Western medicines. Modern studies indicate that acupuncture exerts therapeutic effects through multiple mechanisms, including modulation of hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian axis function, improvement of sex hormone levels, enhancement of uterine and ovarian blood perfusion, optimization of endometrial receptivity, inhibition of granulosa cell apoptosis, and reduction of oxidative stress damage. Clinical studies further confirm that acupuncture, either used alone or in combination with drugs such as clomiphene citrate or gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonists, can effectively improve ovulation rates and pregnancy rates, enhance endometrial thickness and morphology, and exhibit favorable safety profiles. Despite limitations such as small sample sizes, insufficient mechanistic exploration, and non-unified operational standards, acupuncture has emerged as a crucial adjunctive therapy for infertility due to its safety, cost-effectiveness, and ease of administration, providing novel insights and directions for integrated traditional Chinese and Western medicine approaches in infertility treatment. Future research should further conduct high-quality, large-sample randomized controlled trials, combined with modern molecular biology techniques to thoroughly investigate its mechanisms of action, in order to provide more robust evidence-based support for the application and promotion of acupuncture in the field of reproductive medicine.