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

Abstract

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.

The Effect of Prayer on Patients’ Health: Systematic Literature Review

“…The papers had been published in several health journals, two of which related to complementary and alternative practices [22,25]. Six articles had been published over the past decade [23][24][25]27,33,34] and only two in the 1990s [28,32].…”

“…Positive outcomes comprised the reduction of anxiety of mothers of children with cancer, as well as a decrease in the level of concern of the participants who believe there is a solution to their problem, and the improved physical functioning of individuals who believe in prayer (Table 1). Seven studies had been conducted in the USA [23][24][25][26][27][28][29], one in South Korea [30], one in Israel [31], one in the UK [32] and two did not identify the origin [33,34]. The papers had been published in several health journals, two of which related to complementary and alternative practices [22,25].…”

“…With regard to the type of prayer, two studies made use of petition prayer [24,34] and 10 of intercessory prayer [23,[25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. There was a study that associated other therapies with intercessory prayer, such as music, image guidance and therapeutic touch [25].…”

“…Four analysed adverse events in patients with cardiac disorders [25,[27][28][29], two of which included patients undergoing cardiac surgery [25,27]. Two had pregnancy as the research focus: one investigated the success of in vitro fertilization [30] and the other was related to pregnancy and labour [33]. Another study evaluated the effect of prayer on the health of people with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome [23].…”

“…The majority of the studies focused on one daily prayer or more than one prayer per day [23,24,[26][27][28]32,34], during a research period equal to or less than one month [23,[25][26][27][28]30,33,34]. In two studies, the intercessors had different religious backgrounds (Christians, Protestants, Jews, Buddhists and Muslims) [25,27].…”