Effects of pica practice on oral bacteriome and mycobiome profiles among pregnant women: A comparative study
Brenda A. Z. Abu, Lanxin Zhang, Robert Beblavy, Yan Wu, Xingyi Lu, Kevin Fiscella, Michael B. Sohn, Jin Xiao · 2026
Read Effects of pica practice on oral bacteriome and mycobiome profiles among pregnant women: A comparative study by Brenda A. Z. Abu, Lanxin Zhang, Robert Beblavy, Yan Wu, Xingyi Lu, Kevin Fiscella, Michael B. Sohn, Jin Xiao (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13155548.txt.
Description
Brenda Abu and co-authors examine how eating non-food substances during pregnancy relates to the microbes of the mouth, in a study published in 2026. The practice, called pica, includes cravings for clay, ice, or chalk, and it may raise infection risks. The team recruited pregnant women in upstate New York and recorded their pica habits, oral hygiene, and anemia history.
Twenty women took part, most from minority backgrounds, at an average of twenty-nine weeks of pregnancy. Eight reported pica, and six gave samples of what they consumed, mostly ice and chalk. Sequencing of saliva and plaque mapped both bacteria and fungi. The same few bacterial genera dominated both sample types, though their proportions differed between the pica and non-pica groups in the reported comparisons.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Brenda A. Z. Abu, Lanxin Zhang, Robert Beblavy, Yan Wu, Xingyi Lu, Kevin Fiscella, Michael B. Sohn, Jin Xiao |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 41 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |