Acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicines do nothing to boost the chances of having a baby through IVF, fertility doctors will tell patients from today. A growing number of women are willing to pay hundreds of pounds for the ancient treatments in hope they will help them achieve their dream of motherhood.

Gordon Brown's wife Sarah is said to have used acupuncture to help her conceive, while other devotees of the 3,000-year-old technique include Cherie Blair and actress Gwyneth Paltrow. With conflicting conclusions about the value of the complementary medicines in aiding IVF, members of the British Fertility Society set out to obtain a definitive answer.

They combined the results of 14 acupuncture trials involving almost 2,700 women and found it did not affect the woman's odds of becoming pregnant, no matter when it was given, the journal Human Fertility reports. The researchers could not find any Chinese herbal medicine trials that fitted their stringent criteria, and so could not advocate its use.