Fertility seekers looking to China

By MARTIN JOHNSTON

Taking Chinese herbs and having acupuncture for fertility treatment - just like in Sex and the City - is attracting a strong following in New Zealand.

More than half the IVF (in-vitro fertilisation) patients at the Fertility Associates clinic in Wellington take some sort of herbal medicine, like the fictional Charlotte who consulted a Chinese acupuncturist to overcome her infertility in the latest programme in the television series.

Medical director Professor John Hutton said Australian research on fertility patients had found a similar rate of use of herbal treatments.

"What it reflects is our desire to fulfil our goal in life, which is really reproduction. It's a basic urge. People will go to any length to achieve that."

Professor Hutton said his clinic did not endorse traditional Chinese fertility treatment, but nor did he discourage people from seeking it "because often our treatments don't work and I haven't got any evidence [theirs] are harmful".

He said some treatments offered by Chinese practitioners were quite powerful. Sometimes he had noticed on ultrasound scans that one of his patients had multiple eggs developing and then learned she had been taking Chinese herbs.

Katrina Gascoyne, an oriental herbalist and acupuncturist specialising in women's health and fertility treatment, said oriental medicine was useful for treating some fertility problems, but not others, and treatment could take up to nine months.

"When people have got blocked tubes, Chinese medicine is not effective. IVF is much better. Simple non-ovulating problems and uncomplicated low sperm count are easy to treat."

She sometimes worked with IVF patients and said researchers in Germany had shown that acupuncture could increase the success of IVF by 42.5 per cent.

The herbs she used were mostly regulated by the US Food and Drug Administration or Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration.

"They are state-of-the-art herbs. They are not dodgy things you get from a backstreet grocer in Chinatown."