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Diagnosing and treating malaria in pregnancy is critical to optimizing maternal and fetal health outcomes but can be difficult in low transmission areas, where infections may be asymptomatic and have low parasite burden. In this study, Mary Ellen Gilder and colleagues use ultrasensitive PCR to test for subclinical malaria in blood samples from pregnant women taken during antenatal visits. They find that 80% of submicroscopic malaria infections were missed by standard tests and associated with increased risk of maternal anaemia, highlighting the need for cost-effective solutions to prevent and detect subclinical malaria in pregnancy.
Image Credit: Ahmad Ardity
Citation: (2025) PLoS Medicine Issue Image | Vol. 22(3) April 2025. PLoS Med 22(3): ev22.i03. https://doi.org/10.1371/image.pmed.v22.i03
Published: April 4, 2025
Copyright: © 2025 . This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Diagnosing and treating malaria in pregnancy is critical to optimizing maternal and fetal health outcomes but can be difficult in low transmission areas, where infections may be asymptomatic and have low parasite burden. In this study, Mary Ellen Gilder and colleagues use ultrasensitive PCR to test for subclinical malaria in blood samples from pregnant women taken during antenatal visits. They find that 80% of submicroscopic malaria infections were missed by standard tests and associated with increased risk of maternal anaemia, highlighting the need for cost-effective solutions to prevent and detect subclinical malaria in pregnancy.
Image Credit: Ahmad Ardity