This week in PLoS Medicine: Mapping the malaria burden; thrombophilia and pregnancy complications

Two articles have been published by PLoS Medicine this week, including Simon Hay and colleagues’ study which estimates the global burden of Plasmodium falciparum malaria using cartography-based techniques, and forms part of the output of the Malaria Atlas Project (MAP). PLoS Medicine has published a number of papers from the Malaria Atlas project in the past, including this Health in Action explaining the primary goals of the project and this map of global malaria endemicity in 2007.

In our second research article this week, Mark Rodger and colleagues reported the results of their systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies that examined the association between two most common inherited thrombophilias, factor V Leiden (FVL) and prothrombin gene mutation (PGM), and placenta-mediated pregnancy complications. This study suggests that women with FVL have a small absolute increased risk of pregnancy loss but that neither FVL nor PGM increase a woman’s risk of pre-eclampsia or of giving birth to a small gestational age infant.