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The Power of Prayer in Medicine
Nov. 6, 2001 -- Here's more evidence that -- in medicine, as in all of life -- prayer seems to work in mysterious ways.
In one recent study, women at an in vitro fertilization clinic had higher pregnancy rates when total strangers were praying for them. Another study finds that people undergoing risky cardiovascular surgery have fewer complications when they are the focus of prayer groups.
The fertilization study -- conducted at a hospital in Seoul, Korea -- found a doubling of the pregnancy rate among women who were prayed for, says Rogerio A. Lobo, MD, chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Columbia University School of Medicine in New York City. His study appears in the September issue of the Journal of Reproductive Medicine.
"It's a highly-significant finding," Lobo tells WebMD. "I'm first to say we don't know what this means."
The randomized study involved 199 women who were undergoing in vitro fertility treatments at a hospital in Seoul, Korea, during 1998 and 1999. All women were selected for the study based on their similar age and fertility factors, Lobo tells WebMD.
Half the women were randomly assigned to have one of several Christian prayer groups in the U.S., Canada, and Australia pray for them. A photograph of each patient was given to "her" prayer group. While one set of prayer groups prayed directly for the women, a second set of prayer groups prayed for the first set, and a third group prayed for both groups.
Neither the women nor their medical caregivers knew about the study -- or that anyone was praying for them.
"We were very careful to control this as rigorously as we could," Lobo tells WebMD. "We deliberately set it up in an unbiased way." That meant not informing patients they were being prayed for, so it would not influence the women's outcome. Whether the patients were praying for themselves -- or if others were praying for them -- "we don't know," he says.
The women in the "prayed for" group became pregnant twice as often as the other women, he says.
"We were not expecting to find a positive result," says Lobo. Researchers have re-analyzed the data several times, to detect any discrepancies -- but have been unable to find any, he says.
Lobo admits there may be some "biological variable" that they have not discovered, which could account for the high success rate among the prayed-for women. He and his colleagues are already planning a follow-up study also involving in vitro fertilization.
The second study involves 150 patients -- all having serious heart problems, all scheduled for a procedure called angioplasty, in which doctors thread a catheter up into a clogged heart artery, open it up, and insert a little device called a stent to prop it open.
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