A randomized clinical trial on the effects of remote intercessory prayer in the adverse outcomes of pregnancies

• Autor(a) principal: Rosa,Maria Inês da
• Data de Publicação: 2013
• Outros Autores: Silva,Fabio Rosa, Silva,Bruno Rosa, Costa,Luciana Carvalho, Bergamo,Angela Mendes, Silva,Napoleão Chiaramonte, Medeiros,Lidia Rosi de Freitas, Battisti,Iara Denise Endruweit, Azevedo,Rafael
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Ciência & Saúde Coletiva (Online)
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1413-81232013000800022
• topic: Intercessory prayer; Randomized clinical trial; Pregnant women; Excess birth weight; Apgar scores; Birth weight

The scope of this article was to investigate whether intercessory prayer (IP) influences the adverse outcomes of pregnancies. A double-blind, randomized clinical trial was conducted with 564 pregnant women attending a prenatal public health care service. The women were randomly assigned to an IP group or to a control group (n = 289 per group). They were simultaneously and randomly assigned to practice prayer off-site or not. The following parameters were evaluated: Apgar scores, type of delivery and birth weight. The mean age of the women was 25.1 years of age (± 7.4), and the average gestational age was 23.4 weeks (± 8.1). The average number of years of schooling for the women was 8.1 years (± 3.1). The women in the IP and control groups presented a similar number of adverse medical events with non-significant p. No significant differences were detected in the frequency of adverse outcomes in pregnant women who practiced IP and those in the control group.