The escalating burden, pathogenesis, and clinical sequel of malaria during pregnancy have combinatorial adverse impact on both mother and foetus that further perplexed the situation of diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. This prompted us to evaluate the status of population at risk of MIP in Hazaribag, Jharkhand, India. Cross-sectional study was conducted over a year at Sadar Hospital, Hazaribag. Malaria was screened using blood smear and/or RDT. Anaemia was defined as haemoglobin concentration. Pretested questionnaires were used to gather sociodemographic, clinical, and obstetrical data. The prevalence of MIP was 5.4% and 4.3% at ANC and DU, and 13.2% malaria was in women without pregnancy. Interestingly, majority were asymptomatically infected with P. vivax (over 85%) at ANC and DU. Peripheral parasitemia was significantly associated with fever within past week, rural origin of subjects, and first/second pregnancies in multivariate analysis, with the highest risk factor associated with fever followed by rural residence. Strikingly in cohort, anaemia was prevalent in 86% at ANC as compared to 72% at DU, whereas severe anaemia was 13.6% and 7.8% at ANC and DU. Even more anaemia prevalence was observed in MIP group (88% and 89% at ANC and DU), whereas severe anaemia was 23% and 21%, respectively. In view of observed impact of anaemia, parasitemia and asymptomatic infection of P. vivax during pregnancy and delivery suggest prompt diagnosis regardless of symptoms and comprehensive drug regime should be offered to pregnant women in association with existing measures in clinical spectrum of MIP, delivery, and its outcome.

Background and objectives Haemoglobin content is the well accepted indicator for anaemia assessment. The high prevalence of anaemia, maternal health care issues and adverse delivery outcome in Jharkhand, we investigated whether delivering women with anaemia would present a modifiable risk of preterm (PTB) and low birth weight (LBW). Methods A facility-based cross-sectional study involving pregnant women, with screening for pregnancy endpoints and haemoglobin assay, were conducted. Anaemia was classified according to World Health Organization's definition of anaemia in pregnancy. Confounding variables were adjusted in a logistic model. The adjusted odds ratios (AORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were used for analyzing the association among maternal anaemia, PTB and LBW. Results We observed a high prevalence of anaemia (78.45%) in delivering women, whereas high prevalence of preterm birth (34.75%) and LBW (32.81%) in delivering women overall. In the adjusted analysis, overall anaemia in pregnancy was strongly associated with preterm birth (OR, 3.42; 95% CI, 1.98–5.88; P ≤ .0001 ) as compared to LBW (OR, 1.12; 95% CI, 0.65–1.61; P = .0003 ). The risk of PTB and LBW were dependent on the stratification of the anaemia group, as the strongest association was observed in severe (OR, 4.86) followed by mild (OR, 3.66) and moderate (OR, 3.18) anaemia in PTB; whereas risk of LBW was found in severe (OR, 2.5) followed by moderate (OR, 1.11) and mild (OR, 0.57) anaemia. The risk of PTB and LBW across six pregnancy haemoglobin groups were compared, haemoglobin of 10–10.9 g/dl (OR, 1.25) and ≤ 8 g/dl (OR, 1.03) have shown association with PTB and LBW, respectively. However, high haemoglobin concentration was not associated with either PTB or LBW. Conclusions Anaemia in delivering women was associated with an elevated risk of PTB and LBW and the risk increased with the severity of anaemia in pregnant women.

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A hydroponics experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of salinity (NaCl) and cadmium (Cd) stresses on growth, lipid peroxidation, and antioxidant enzyme activities of three wheat cultivars differing in salt tolerance. Cd and NaCl stresses inhibited plant growth, reduced chlorophyll content, and increased melondialdehyde content and the activities of superoxide dismutase, catalase and peroxidase. The combined effect of NaCl and Cd on these parameters was larger than both NaCl and Cd alone. There was an obvious difference in the response to the both stresses among the three genotypes, with Pir Sabak-85 being less affected.