Studies on Parasitaemia, Immunologic and Virologic Indices among Pregnant Mothers Living with HIV Attending Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, Kano State-Nigeria

Aims: To determine the presence of malaria parasite and also examine the relationship between HIV infection and the severity of malaria.

Study Design: A hospital based prospective cohort study was carried out among 200 pregnant mothers living with HIV at Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital through routine voluntary and confidential HIV screening.

Place and Duration of Study: The study was conducted at Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, Kano between July and December, 2016.

Methodology: Biomedical data was obtained and blood samples were aseptically collected in an EDTA container. Malaria screening, CD4 - T cell Count and Viral load were systematically performed using standard procedures. Chi-square test was used to establish statistical association between study variables where p-value of ≤ 0.05 was considered significant.

Results: Malaria prevalence was 141(70.5%) with 41(29.1%) having parasitaemia of ≥ 10,000/µl. Primigravidae had 69(48.9) and Multigravidae had 72(51.1) prevalence rates. The severity of infection was 27(65.9%) among those with CD4 count ≤ 200 cells/mm3. On the basis of viral load estimation, severity of the infection was higher 28(68.3%) among those with viral load ≥ 10000 copies/ml.

Conclusion: In view of the higher prevalence of malaria infection among pregnant mothers living with HIV, there is need for Antenatal care service to necessitate routing screening of malaria parasite and level of parasitaemia along with CD4 cells count and viral load test since the severity of malaria infection increased due to immunosuppression.