Age-old treatment may help some infertile couples get pregnant

Age-old treatment may help some infertile couples get pregnant

A 100-year-old medical treatment could help infertile women get pregnant without undergoing pricey in vitriol fertilization (IVF), a new study suggests.
The method was first used in 1917 and involves flushing a woman's Fallopian tubes with an iodized poppy seed oil.
"Over the past century, pregnancy rates among infertile women reportedly increased after their tubes had been flushed with either water or oil during" a dye test of the Fallopian tubes under X-ray, explained study lead researcher Ben Mol. He's with the University of Adelaide in Australia."Until now, it has been unclear whether the type of solution used in the procedure was influencing the change in fertility," Mol said in a university news release.
"Our results have been even more exciting than we could have predicted, helping to confirm that an age-old medical technique still has an important place in modern medicine," he added.
This study included more than 1,100 women being treated for infertility who had their Fallopian tubes flushed with either the poppy seed oil or water.
Successful pregnancies occurred within six months for nearly 40 percent of the women in the oil group and 29 percent of those in the water group, the researchers reported May 18 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The poppy seed oil used in the study is available in 47 countries worldwide, the authors noted.
"The rates of successful pregnancy were significantly higher in the oil-based group, and after only one treatment," Mol said. "This is an important outcome for women who would have had no other course of action other than to seek IVF treatment. It offers new hope to infertile couples."