Literature search
PubMed, MEDLINE, Web of Science, EMBASE and Cochrane Register of Controlled Clinical Trials (CENTRAL) were searched to obtain articles addressing the effect of acupuncture on the outcomes of IVF-ET published up to 6 September 2021. Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms and free text terms were combined to screen for potentially relevant studies in PubMed, the detailed search algorithm will be slightly modified and used in several other databases (Appendix S1). In addition, some Chinese databases such as the Wanfang Databases, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), the VIP databases and SinoMed were used to collect related studies in China.
Other potentially relevant papers were also identified by cross-referencing. The present study complied with the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) guidelines 6 (Table S1 ).