Prevalence of gestational, placental and congenital malaria in north-west Colombia

Malaria Journal

Research

Olga Agudelo¹  Amanda Maestre¹  Jaime Carmona-Fonseca¹  Eliana Arango¹ 

[1] Grupo Salud y Comunidad, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia;

关键词: Pregnancy;    Malaria;    Plasmodium;    Prevalence;    Colombia;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1475-2875-12-341

 received in 2013-04-09, accepted in 2013-09-17,  发布年份 2013

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe frequency of pregnancy-associated malaria is increasingly being documented in American countries. In Colombia, with higher frequency of Plasmodium vivax over Plasmodium falciparum infection, recent reports confirmed gestational malaria as a serious public health problem. Thick smear examination is the gold standard to diagnose malaria in endemic settings, but in recent years, molecular diagnostic methods have contributed to elucidate the dimension of the problem of gestational malaria. The study was aimed at exploring the prevalence of gestational, placental and congenital malaria in women who delivered at the local hospitals of north-west Colombia, between June 2008 and April 2011.MethodsA group of 129 parturient women was selected to explore the prevalence of gestational, placental and congenital malaria in a descriptive, prospective and transversal (prevalence) design. Diagnosis was based on the simultaneous application of two independent diagnostic tests: microscopy of thick blood smears and a polymerase chain reaction assay (PCR).ResultsThe prevalence of gestational malaria (thick smear /PCR) was 9.1%/14.0%; placental malaria was 3.3%/16.5% and congenital malaria was absent. A history of gestational malaria during the current pregnancy was significantly associated with gestational malaria at delivery. Plasmodium vivax caused 65% of cases of gestational malaria, whereas P. falciparum caused most cases of placental malaria.ConclusionsGestational and placental malaria are a serious problem in the region, but the risk of congenital malaria is low. A history of malaria during pregnancy may be a practical indicator of infection at delivery.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Agudelo et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.