Impact of malaria on inflammatory proteins, haematological and biochemical indices in pregnancy

Malaria morbidity and mortality has remained a major health burden in the developing countries especially in tropical Africa. Thus malaria association in pregnancy and its associated complication remains a major health problem to the expectant mothers. In this study a total of five hundred and fifty (550) blood specimens were obtained from both pregnant and non-pregnant mothers with and without malaria parasitaemia who consented to the study. Selected biochemical and haematological parameters were assessed using conventional methods. The result showed that the malaria parasite species isolated was plasmodium falcipariumwhich accounted for about 80% of the total population; the age group of 26-35years had the highest malaria density for those classified as low (53.7%), average (55.7%) and high (70.4%). This accounted for 60.7% of the total malaria parasite density. Further analysis of the malaria parasite density on pregnancy according to their trimester showed that women on their second trimester of pregnancy had the highest percentage of malaria parasite density of 55.7% and this was statistically significant (P>0.05). The result also show that pregnancy with malaria parasitaemia had the highest mean ± standard deviation of 20.37± 15.55 while those grouped as having ‘malaria parasitaemia without pregnancy’ had the lowest (6.09± 3.76) level of C- reactive protein (CRP). This was also statistically significant (P<0.01). Conclusively, the findings recorded in this study have now shown that malaria parasite infections during pregnancy have a significant impact on both the biochemical and haematological indices and the prevalent species of the parasite is plasmodium faciparium.Keywords: plasmodium faciparium, pregnancy, malaria parasitaemia, morbidity, mortality.