Use of medicinal plants during pregnancy

• Autor(a) principal: Nunes, Josefina Dorotéa
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Outros Autores: Costa, Andréa Raquel Fernandes Carlos da, Oliveira, Kalyane Kelly Duarte de
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista Fitos
• Texto Completo: https://revistafitos.far.fiocruz.br/index.php/revista-fitos/article/view/1003
• topic: Pregnant women; Phytotherapy; Therapeutic purposes; Contra indications; Gestantes; Fitoterapia; Fins terapêuticos; Contraindicações

The medicinal plants are contraindicated during pregnancy because they lack studies to ensure their safety and efficacy. However, pregnant women believe that they do not cause harm to the fetus. The objective was to analyze the use of medicinal plants at gestational period. The research was quantitative, descriptive and exploratory character and cross section. The use of medicinal plants during pregnancy, medicinal plants commonly used at pregnancy, therapeutic, professional monitoring of health indicators and knowledge of the risks, complications during pregnancy, and side effects cited by women surveyed were the variables analyzed. Data were expressed in simple frequency and percentage. To address the associations of the presence of adverse reactions to the use of medicinal plants with the analyzed variables Fisher's exact and chi-square test were performed. It was observed that 78% of the pregnant women used medicinal plants during pregnancy, and, in 98.9% of cases the use of medicinal plants was not followed by health professionals and 61.3% don’t know the risks of medicinal plants during pregnancy. In this sense, we highlight the importance of dialogue between health professionals, pregnant women and their families, valuing popular knowledge, but highlighting the harmful effects that medicinal plants can cause during pregnancy.