Mukh Syaifudin, Tur Rahardjo, Teja Kisnanto and Siti Nurhyati
Malaria is an important cause of severe anemia in pregnant women, and by this mechanism malaria causes around 10,000 maternal deaths each year. In the world, research on the malaria vaccine in pregnancy has also been relatively neglected. In this paper, we studied the effects of gamma irradiated P. berghei injection to pregnant mouse and its progenies. On the day 9 of pregnancy, a number of 150, 175 and 200Gy irradiated parasites in blood were injected intraperitoneally to mouse. The monitoring of parasitemia in blood of pregnant and progenies were started 3 days after infection and 2 weeks after delivery, respectively. The number, body weight and survival times of progenies were recorded. Results showed that non irradiated parasites injection produced less progenies than those of irradiated parasites. There were no parasites in blood of progenies of mother injected with non irradiated and irradiated infected bloods. Peak of parasitemia and survival were similar in infected pregnant and non pregnant mice, although development of parasitemia was slightly accelerated in pregnant mice. We concluded that there were no effects of parasite injection to number, body weightand survival time of progenies, suggesting no transmission of parasites from mother to fetus. It is may be due to low number of parasite injected or disappearance of parasites in early age of progenies.
