Trend and spatial distribution of infectious diseases in pregnant women in the state of Paraná-Brazil.
Larissa Pereira Falavina, Maicon Henrique Lentsck, Thais Aidar de Freitas Mathias
PMID 31432916WHAT IT FOUND
Syphilis, HIV and toxoplasmosis notifications in pregnant women in Paraná increased over the study period, with large regional differences.
Hepatitis and influenza did not show increasing trends.
Key findings
01Reported rates for syphilis, toxoplasmosis, dengue and HIV/AIDS increased on average by 30.8%, 30.4%, 15.4% and 2.6% respectively.
02In the North and Northwest Macro-regions, syphilis rates increased by 40.7% and 38% on average.
03In the last four years, spatial analysis showed higher incidence of dengue, syphilis and HIV/AIDS reaching 180.2, 141.7 and 100.8 cases per 10,000 live births.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
It used existing notification records, so cases may have been missed or recorded inconsistently. It looked at groups of regions, not individual patients, so it cannot say what happened to any one pregnant woman. Some areas had no or very few reports, so low rates may reflect weak reporting rather than low disease. It did not test whether screening, education or vaccination changed disease rates.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat the increasing notification rates as a proven increase in true disease among individual pregnant women. The study used regional reports, so under-reporting, recording quality and differences in reporting can change the numbers.