Malaria during pregnancy in a reference centre from the Brazilian Amazon: unexpected increase in the frequency of Plasmodium falciparum infections
AUTOR(ES)
Martínez-Espinosa, Flor Ernestina, Daniel-Ribeiro, Cláudio Tadeu, Alecrim, Wilson Duarte
FONTE
Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO
2004-02
RESUMO
Malaria remains globally the most important parasitic disease of man. Data on its deleterious effects during pregnancy have been extensively documented in hyperendemic, holoendemic, and mesoendemic areas from Africa and Asia where Plasmodium falciparum is responsible for almost all infections. However, knowledge about malaria during pregnancy in areas where transmission is unstable and P. vivax is the most prevalent species, such as the Brazilian Amazon, is scarce. Here, we report a preliminary cross sectional descriptive study, carried out at the Fundação de Medicina Tropical do Amazonas, a reference centre for diagnosis and treatment of tropical diseases in the west-Amazon (Manaus, Brazil). A total of 1699 febrile childbearing age women had positive thick blood smears to Plasmodium species, between January and November 1997: 1401 (82.5%) were positive for P. vivax , 286 (16.8%) for P. falciparum and 12 (0.07%) carried mixed infections. From the malarious patients, 195 were pregnant. The ratio of P. falciparum to P. vivax infections in the group of non-pregnant infected women was 1:5.6 while it was 1:2.3 in that of pregnant infected ones. Similar rates or even proportionally more vivax infections during pregnancy were expected to occur, in function of the contraindication of primaquine with the resulting increased P. vivax relapse rates. Such an observation suggests that the mechanism of resistance/susceptibility to infection and/or malaria pathogenesis in pregnant women may differ according to Plasmodium species and that the extensively described increase in the frequencies of malaria infection during pregnancy may be specifically due to P. falciparum infection.
Documentos Relacionados
- Influence of age on the haemoglobin concentration of malaria-infected patients in a reference centre in the Brazilian Amazon
- Casos assintomáticos de malária na Amazônia Brasileira: citoaderência, anticorpos contra a superfície da hemácia infectada e proteção em infecções naturais por Plasmodium falciparum.
- Allelic Diversity and Antibody Recognition of Plasmodium falciparum Merozoite Surface Protein 1 during Hypoendemic Malaria Transmission in the Brazilian Amazon Region
- In vitro antimalarial activity of tigecycline against Plasmodium falciparum culture-adapted reference strains and clinical isolates from the Brazilian Amazon
- Levels of cytokines in plasma during Plasmodium falciparum malaria attacks.