Methods
This narrative review was conceived as part of an undergraduate research
project between the University of Leeds and Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS
Trust. In order to determine epidemiological data on prescription drug
use in ART, a search was conducted in PubMed, EMBASE and Cochrane
CENTRAL register of controlled trials with the following key words: (i)
‘In-vitro fertilisation’,, ‘ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection)’
‘Artificial reproductive techniques’ ‘ART’; and (ii) ‘medications’,
‘therapeutics’, ‘drugs’, ‘prescription’ and ‘treatment’ in. Papers that
were written in non-English languages were not included. These results
enabled us to understand the most common drugs utilised by men and women
having ART and subsequently, to determine evidence of these specific
drugs in a context of ART, a search was conducted independently by ER
and AS with the following key words: (i) ‘In-vitro fertilisation’, ,
‘IVF’, ‘Artificial reproductive techniques’, ‘ART’, ‘Intra-cytoplasmic
sperm injection’, ‘ICSI’ and specific drug groups discussed below and
which have been tabulated in table 2. We primarily focussed on articles
which described one medication as a prescription for a pre-existing
medical condition in the 6 months prior to ART treatment as the
exposure, and clinical pregnancy. and live birth as the outcome.
Articles, which focussed on prescription medication deliberately
prescribed in order to influence ART outcome, were excluded.