Women with unexplained infertility undergoing intrauterine insemination would do better to take oral ovarian stimulation agents than to use gonadotropins, say the authors of a meta-analysis.

The US researchers used data from eight randomised clinical trials, including nearly 3000 patients, to compare outcomes in women using gonadotropins with those in women taking the oral agents clomiphene and letrozole.

Five studies (including 2098 patients) reported the desired outcome of singleton live births on a per-patient basis, the authors reported in Fertility and Sterility.

Compared with the oral ovarian stimulation agents, gonadotropins did not increase the number of singleton live births — the goal of infertility treatment — they found.