INTRODUCTION
LBW, malaria, microscopy-diagnosed, parasitemia, infections
MALARIA, PARASITEMIA, INFECTIONS
Low birth weight (LBW) is an important risk factor of childhood mortality, morbidity, and lower intellectual ability later in life.Typical interventions aimed to reduce LBW incidence focus on improving maternal nutrition, managing maternal infections, encouraging a healthy life style, and providing health services to pregnant women.In the current study, we aimed to determine the relative impact of the two interventions, compared with a two-dose SP IPTp regimen, on maternal malaria parasitemia in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy. Additionally, we assessed the impact of the two IPTp interventions on fetal growth velocity. We have earlier shown that monthly SP regimen with and without azithromycin reduced the prevalence of microscopy-diagnosed malaria at 32 weeks of gestation and polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-diagnosed malaria at delivery, without major differences between monthly SP and AZI-SP groups.