Abstract
The present study explored studies directed at elucidating the effectiveness of Korean medicine in the treatment of sterility and systematically analyzed the trends of studies on sterility. The standardization and objectification based on results for this study may contribute to the development of effective Korean medicine in reducing sterility. In the annual tendency of sterility-related clinical studies, the number of papers began to increase rapidly from 2000, and 15 papers were published from 2000 till 2011. Then, in the technical journals publishing them, The Journal of Oriental Obstetrics & Gynecology published 13 the most papers. In the institutions to which the first authors belonged, Dongguk University Hospital had 5 the most papers. In the number of test subjects was also analyzed and as the result the studies with 1~9 were the most as 10. In the study design analysis, there were 10 case reports, 5 case series and 4 before and after studies. In the analysis of intervention methods, there were 10 papers where only the Korean medicines were given, next 6 papers where the acupuncture and moxibustion were added, and 3 papers where the Korean medical therapies and other subsidiary therapies were used. In the analysis on the existence of pattern identification, there were 12 papers with the pattern identification, 6 without the pattern identification and 1 with the four constitution identification. In the IRB approval, 18 or most papers had not received the IRB approval and just 1 paper got the IRB approval. When the sterility-related clinical studies published in the Korean medical journals were surveyed, it turned out that there are no RCT studies and there is just one study with the IRB approval. And there were 6 papers without the pattern identification of Korean medicine. So, it seems necessary in the future to improve the papers in these respects for the development of Korean medicine sterility treatment with a good basis through the more systematic and accurate study method.
