Chinese Medicine as Complementary Therapy for Female Infertility

• Published in: Chinese journal of integrative medicine Vol. 23; no. 4; pp. 245 - 252
• Main Authors: Xia, Ju-feng, Inagaki, Yoshinori, Zhang, Jian-feng, Wang, Ling, Song, Pei-pei
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.04.2017
• Subjects: Chinese; combination; complementary; Complementary Therapies; Embryo Implantation; Female; Fertilization in Vitro; Hormones - metabolism; Humans; infertility; Infertility, Female - immunology; Infertility, Female - therapy; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Medicine, Chinese Traditional; Perspective; therapy; complementary medicine; combination therapy; Chinese medicine; female infertility
• ISSN: 1672-0415; 1993-0402; 1993-0402
• DOI: 10.1007/s11655-016-2510-5

Chinese medicine （CM） has been used in clinical treatment for thousands of years in China,Japan, Korea, and other countries. CM is at present attracting many attentions around the wodd for reproductivehealth care and disease prevention, including treatment of female infertility. This review focuses on the CMtreatment for female infertility patients, and supplies a summary on the efficacy, safety, and mechanism ofsome Chinese herbal medicines, herbal medicine-derived active compounds, and acupuncture. A large numberof researches have reported that CM could alleviate or even cure female infertility by regulating hormone,improving reproductive outcome of in vivo fertilization, affecting embryonic implantation, curing polycysticovarian syndrome, endometriosis, pelvic inflammatory disease, relieving mental stress, and regulating immunesystem. Meanwhile, a few studies claimed that there was little adverse reaction of CM in randomized controlledtrials. However, up to present there is a lack of adequate evidences with molecular mechanistic researches andrandomized controlled trials to prove the CM as an effective and safe treatment for infertility. Thus, utility of CMas a complementary medicine will be a feasible method to improve the outcome of female infertility treatment.