Experts have dismissed the notion that acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicines aid a woman's chance of getting pregnant.
The British Fertility Society (BFS) told couples undergoing fertility treatments that it found no proof that the complementary treatments can boost conception.
It used information collected from 14 studies involving 2,670 patients and produced a comparison of patients randomly assigned to receive either " real" or " fake" treatements.
Professor Adam Balen, who chairs the BFS Policy and Practice Committee, said: " We conclude that there is currently no evidence that acupuncture or Chinese herbal medicine when used in conjunction with assisted fertility treatment, have any beneficial effect on live birth rate or pregnancy rate."
While its effect on fertility may be under scrutiny, research released last month showed that acupuncture can help with any periods of pain that mothers-to-be experience during their pregnancy.
Published in the journal Brain Research, the study showed that some parts of the brain tasked with processing pain were 'deactivated' when the far eastern treatment was administered.
