Background
Congenital malaria is usually defined as the detection of asexual forms of Plasmodium spp. in a blood sample of a neonate during perinatal age if there is no possibility of postpartum infection by a mosquito bite. The incidence of congenital malaria is highly variable and seems related to several factors, such as different diagnostic
Conclusions
The maternal RDT sample was negative, while the infant RDT was positive; in both cases microscopy of blood smears and PCR showed infection with P. falciparum. Two of the genotypic molecular markers displayed different allelic variants between the two samples. This difference could imply infection multiplicity of the mother during the pregnancy, possibly harbouring more than one isolate, only one of them being transmitted to the newborn while the other persisting in the mother's blood. Because of the increasing number of pregnant women coming from endemic areas for malaria, an accurate anamnesis of infant's mother, and the inclusion of Plasmodium spp. research into TORCH screenings for mother-infant pair at birth, aiming at reducing morbidity and mortality associated to the disease might be suitable.