Outcomes.
parasitemia, PCR-diagnosed malaria parasitemia, PCR-diagnosed
MALARIA, PARASITEMIA
To identify maternal malaria parasitemia status, all DBS samples were run on an ABI 7900 Real-Time System (Applied Biosystems, Foster City, CA). Samples were considered positive if both cycle threshold values were below 45. We aimed at high sensitivity and specificity and therefore analyzed all samples in duplicate. Reactions with only one amplification curve reaching the threshold line were repeated. Analyses of PCR-diagnosed malaria parasitemia included participants who had at least one DBS sample collected after enrollment and who had all the background information available that we used as covariates in the analyses. We have previously reported the prevalence of maternal PCR-diagnosed peripheral blood malaria parasitemia at delivery, but we excluded these samples from our main analyses because the samples had been analyzed with a different laboratory protocol.Biparietal diameter and femur length were measured in duplicate as millimeters. An average of the two measurements was used and rounded down. We excluded twin pregnancies because we could not confirm which fetus was measured. Of the 341 participants with repeated biparietal diameter and femur length measurements, the analysis included the results of 337 participants who had all background information available that was used as covariates in the analyses. We graphically compared the biparietal diameter and femur length in our sample to the 5th, 50th, and 95th percentile in the INTERGROWTH-21st standards.