Submicroscopic Plasmodium falciparum malaria and low birth weight in an area of unstable malaria transmission in Central Sudan

Malaria Journal

Research

Salah E Elzaki¹  Badria B El-Sayed¹  Magdi M Salih²  Ahmed A Mohmmed³  Elhassan M Elhassan⁴  Ishag Adam⁵  Amal H Mohammed⁵ 

[1] Department of Epidemiology, Tropical Medicine Research Institute, National Centre for Research, Khartoum, Sudan;Faculty of Medical Laboratory Sciences, University of Khartoum, Khartoum, Sudan;Faculty of Medicine, The National Ribat University, P.O. Box 1157, Khartoum, Sudan;Faculty of Medicine, University of Gezira, P.O. Box 816, Medani, Sudan;Faculty of Medicine, University of Khartoum, P. O. Box 102, Khartoum, Sudan;

关键词: Plasmodium falciparum;    Submicroscopic infection;    Pregnancy;    Placenta;    Parasite;    Low birth weight;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1475-2875-12-172

 received in 2013-02-08, accepted in 2013-05-24,  发布年份 2013

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundMalaria, which frequently occurs in pregnant women in the tropics, is a leading cause of maternal anaemia and low birth weight (LBW) in infants. Few data exist concerning malaria infections that are present at submicroscopic levels during pregnancy and their LBW delivery in babies.MethodsA case–control study (87 in each group) was conducted at the Medani Hospital, Central Sudan. Cases were women who had LBW deliveries where the infants weighed < 2,500 g. Controls were parturient women without having LBW babies. Obstetrical and medical characteristics were gathered from both groups through structured questionnaires. Both cases and controls were investigated for malaria using microscopic blood film analysis, placental histology and polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Microscopic and PCR analyses were conducted on maternal peripheral blood, placenta, and umbilical cord samples. Infant weights were recorded immediately after birth.ResultsPlasmodium falciparum-positive blood films were not obtained from any of the women (cases or controls). Twenty-seven (31.0%) versus 22 (25.3%) (P = 0.500) of the cases and controls, respectively, had placental malaria infections as determined by histological examination. In comparison to the controls, the submicroscopic malaria infection prevalence rates were significantly higher in the cases; 24 (27.6%) vs six (7.0%), P < 0.001. Multivariate analysis showed that while malaria infection of the placenta (based on histology) was not associated with LBW, submicroscopic P. falciparum infection (OR = 6.89, 95% CI = 2.2–20.8; P = 0.001), or a combination of histologically determined and submicroscopic infections (OR = 2.45, 95% CI = 1.2–4.9; P = 0.012), were significantly associated with LBW.ConclusionIn Central Sudan, pregnant women were at a higher risk of having an LBW delivery if they had submicroscopic infections rather than a histological diagnosis of placental malaria.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Mohammed 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.