Prevalence of complementary and alternative medicine use by Iranian infertile women: A multi-center cross-sectional study

Objectives: It has been speculated that infertile women use complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) frequently in addition to conventional therapy. This study was conducted to investigate the prevalence of complementary and alternative medicine use by Iranian infertile women.Design: This multi-center cross-sectional study was conducted in four public and private referral infertility clinics located in different metropolitan areas of Iran including Tehran, Mashhad, Isfahan and Shiraz from August to December 2019. Any infertile woman attending an infertility clinic was checked for eligibility and 282 infertile women were selected by convenience sampling. A self-structured questionnaire consisted of three parts of demographic, infertility-related and CAM-related data was administered. This was completed on a self-report basis. SPSS-IBM 25 was used for data analysis using descriptive statistical methods and Logistic regression models.Results: The mean number of different CAM methods used was 2.95 & PLUSMN; 1.88. Also, 49.61% of women used CAM at least once for infertility in the last year. CAM use included Iranian traditional medicine (ITM), Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and other CAM methods. The most commonly used method and mode of CAM were ITM (95. 4%) and Iranian herbal medicine (70.2%), respectively. Most of participants (61. 3%) did not disclose their use of CAM to the physicians. The majority of participants (72. 7%) received recommendations from family and friends for CAM use.Conclusions: CAM use was prevalent among Iranian infertile women and ITM as well as herbal medicines were the most common. Therefore, it is required that a coherent plan be developed to integrate CAM use into the allopathic medicine.