meta-analysis

Malaria is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in pediatrics in malaria endemic areas. Artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) are the drugs of choice for malaria management particularly across malaria-endemic countries. This systematic review and meta-analysis was performed to assess efficacy and safety of ACTs for uncomplicated malaria in pediatric populations.

Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) extracted from dried blood spots (DBS) provides a fast, inexpensive, and convenient method for large-scale epidemiological studies. This study compared the performance of PCR between DNA extracted from DBS and DNA obtained from whole blood for detecting malarial parasites. Primary studies assessing the diagnostic performance of PCR using DNA extracted from DBS and whole blood for detecting malarial parasites were obtained from the ISI Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed databases.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP) contribute 14% to global maternal mortality. HDP encompasses several subcategories, including gestational hypertension (GH) and pre-eclampsia. These two conditions are both characterised by a rise in blood pressure, with an onset from 20 weeks of gestation. They also share some common risk factors. The current definition of pre-eclampsia includes raised blood pressure in the absence of proteinuria, thus presenting the two conditions as a spectrum. In this article, we refer to both conditions as gestational hypertension, which is our outcome of interest. The aetiology of GH is not yet clearly understood. Observational studies have suggested that malaria may be associated with GH. However, the evidence from these small studies has been inconclusive. Having a better understanding of the association between malaria and GH may help inform prevention strategies to reduce maternal and infant mortality and morbidity.

Delay in receiving treatment for uncomplicated malaria (UM) is often reported to increase the risk of developing severe malaria (SM), but access to treatment remains low in most high-burden areas. Understanding the contribution of treatment delay on progression to severe disease is critical to determine how quickly patients need to receive treatment and to quantify the impact of widely implemented treatment interventions, such as ‘test-and-treat’ policies administered by community health workers (CHWs). We conducted a pooled individual-participant meta-analysis to estimate the association between treatment delay and presenting with SM.