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A prospective
study of primigravidae women attending an antenatal clinic in Malawi found
that among 178 singleton deliveries, 35% of infants were preterm or had IUGR
(Sullivan et al. 1999). Cord blood parasitemia (odds ratio (OR) =
3.43; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.3-8.8), placental parasitemia (OR =
2.43; 95% CI, 1.2-5.1), and postdelivery maternal peripheral parasitemia (OR
= 2.78; 95% CI, 1.3-6.1) were associated with preterm delivery in this
population. Parasitemia and/or clinically diagnosed malaria in the antenatal
period was associated with IUGR (OR = 5.13; 95% CI, 1.4-19.4). Moormann
et al. (1999) looked at the placental cytokine expression and its
relationship to intrauterine growth retardation in 23 malaria-infected and
21 uninfected primigravidae women who had delivered in the same region of
Malawi. The authors found a significant increase in the expression of
interleukin. |