Do mind body-based interventions improve anxiety state in infertile women undergoing IVF? Summary answer: Mind/body based interventions improve anxiety-state measured by the State-trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) in women undergoing IVF treatment. What is known already: Infertility and its treatments can be emotionally and physically challenging. Anxiety has a negative impact quality of life during treatments and leads to treatment discontinuation. The goal of mind-body based interventions is to achieve a state of alert, focused relaxation by deliberately paying attention to thoughts and sensations without judgment allowing stress reduction in numerous physical and psychological conditions. This promising approach has been developed and used in infertile patients. Different dedicated programs have been developed for infertile patients including discussion, breathing exercises, yoga positions, relaxation and meditation. Study design, size, duration: This study is a systematic review. A comprehensive and systematic search of literature was conducted in October 2016. We identified records by electronic searches in the following databases: PubMed, PsychINFO, EMBASE, the Cochrane Library. When conducting the searches we combined the keywords representing the two primary concepts infertility and mind body based interventions. Participants/materials, setting, methods: Studies were considered eligible if they 1) reported data on infertile participants, 2) evaluated the effect of a mind-body intervention (mindfulness, mindfulness stress reduction programs (MBSR), yoga), 3) included baseline and post intervention measures of anxiety by the State-trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) or another anxiety questionnaire, 4) used a quantitative search approach. Main results and the role of chance: In total 8 publications met the eligibility criteria. One was excluded since only the congress abstract was available without access to full data. There were two uncontrolled studies with a pre and post intervention evaluation of state anxiety, 3 non-randomized controlled studies and 2 randomized controlled trials assessing pre and post intervention state anxiety levels in the intervention and control groups. The timing of the intervention in regard to the infertility treatment differed between studies. The 2 uncontrolled studies reported a significant reduction in STAI-state scores before and after the completion of the intervention. The 5 controlled studies all reported a significant improvement in anxiety state in the intervention group in comparison to the control group. We calculated the effect size for mean differences of groups with unequal sample sizes with a pre-post-control (PPC) design. The intervention had a small effect on anxiety state in 4 studies (Effect size d of 0.19, 0.23, 0.29, 0.34, respectively) and a large effect (Effect size d of 1.52) in one study. Limitations, reasons for caution: Only two studies had a randomized controlled design and all studies except one included women only. The timing of the intervention differed between studies; it is therefore not possible to evaluate the optimal timing of the mind-body intervention during IVF treatments. Wider implications of the findings: Mind body based interventions, based on relaxation, breathing and meditation, could be a useful approach in anxiety reduction in women undergoing IVF treatments. Future studies should focus on the timing of these interventions during IVF treatments.