Practices of pica among pregnant women in a tertiary healthcare facility in Ghana.
Kennedy Diema Konlan, Juliana Asibi Abdulai, Kennedy Dodam Konlan and 2 others
PMID 32257266WHAT IT FOUND
Pregnant women at a Ghana antenatal clinic reported eating non-food items during pregnancy (47.5%), most often white clay and ice, with reported reasons including craving and reducing nausea.
Key findings
0147.5% of pregnant women reported ever taking pica during pregnancy.
02White clay (61.8%) and ice (24.3%) were the most commonly reported pica items.
03Reported reasons for eating pica included craving (67.7%), scent of the item (51.1%), reducing nausea and vomiting (45.0%), and taste (44.6%).
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The findings are self-report, and no independent verification was made of what women ate. The study was done in one hospital antenatal clinic in Ghana, where women may be more likely to have received health education and may under-report pica. It was cross-sectional, so it describes practices and perceptions at one time but cannot show that pica caused anaemia, stillbirth or birth defects. The paper describes some associations as significant even when the reported p value was .98, so demographic associations should be read cautiously.
Declared interests
The authors declared no competing interests.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as proof that pica caused anaemia, stillbirth or birth defects. It was a cross-sectional self-report survey of pregnant women's practices and perceptions, and it did not independently verify what was eaten or measure pregnancy outcomes.