Two common fertility treatments involving an ovary-stimulating drug and artificial insemination to improve the chances of conceiving a child yields the same results as no treatment at all, according to a study published Friday.

Clomifene citrate, best known by its brand names Clomid and Serophene, a drug used by millions of women in recent decades to stimulate ovaries to produce eggs, failed to improve the odds of becoming pregnant, researchers in Britain said.

The same holds true for the so-called unstimulated intra-uterine insemination (IUI) or artificial insemination, as this method also did not prove beneficial for women with unexplained fertility.

The study, led by Siladitya Bhattacharya, a professor at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, was conducted on 580 women facing infertility who were randomly divided into three groups.

One group of 193 women were given advice on having sex regularly but were left to try to conceive naturally. Another 194 women were given clomifene. The remaining 193 were given IUI, which is thought to enhance the chance of pregnancy by injecting sperm behind the cervical barrier. All treatments were followed for six months.

The respective live birth rates for the three groups were 17, 14 and 23 percent i.e. 32 among the 193 women trying to conceive naturally (17 per cent), 26 among those on the drug (14 per cent) and 43 among those having insemination (23 per cent).

The researchers concluded that these differences were not significant enough to be attributed solely to treatment or lack of it. The researchers did not evaluate the efficacy of the two methods used in combination, as is often done.

The study was published in the British Medical Journal.