Morning Briefing

Clinical trials are underway to test an azithromycin-based combination treatment for pregnant women, "which could tackle some of the leading preventable causes of death for babies in sub-Saharan Africa," according to researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), who published a report on Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) showing that "[a] large number of pregnant women in sub-Saharan Africa are infected with both malaria and sexually transmitted/reproductive tract infections (STIs/RTIs)," AlertNet reports (Mollins, 5/15). "The researchers looked at 171 studies from sub-Saharan Africa over a 20-year period, which showed whether women attending antenatal clinics were infected with malaria, or with a range of sexually transmitted and reproductive tract infections -- syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia and bacterial and parasitic infections of the vagina," IRIN writes, adding, "If left untreated, these can lead to miscarriages, stillbirths, premature births and low birthweight babies" (5/16).