This is the first study to investigate malaria placental histology and monocytes and macrophage cellular infiltrations in an area with unstable malaria transmission in Africa. The main findings of the current study were; most (20/23, 87.0%) of the placental infections were past infections which affect pregnant women regardless to their parity and had no effects on birth weight. Monocytes and macrophages cellular infiltrations were detected in 32.2% of the placentae. They were more predominant among placentae with past malaria infections irrespective to parity, associated with maternal anaemia and had no effect on birth weight. We have previously shown that placental malaria infections, hormonal and cytokines levels were not different between the primigravidae and multigravidae among pregnant women in eastern and central Sudan [
20,
23,
24]. This observation could be explained by the low immunity among pregnant women in an area of unstable malaria transmission.
In neighboring Tanzania, it has been shown that, malaria parasitized placentae, especially in primigravidae, had the most significant increase in all inflammatory cellular types -except NK cells-with monocytes and macrophages representing the major population of the infiltrate [
18]. It has been previously shown that the inflammatory response was particularly marked in chronic placental malaria infections, no increase in inflammatory cell counts were observed in cases with past infection and these infiltrates were associated with reductions in birth weight [
18]. Likewise, Ismail et al., [
15] observed that primiparae had higher placental infections, chronic infections and inflammatory cell infiltration more frequently than multiparae. In their observation; chronic malaria infection had the significant inflammatory cell infiltration, acute infections showed a mild increase in inflammatory cell infiltration and those with past infections had no increase in the cell infiltration. However, the low prevalence of placental malaria in these women in the current study, the relatively small sample size and perhaps the size of placental tissue itself makes it hard to compare this study to other ones of placental malaria. Because malaria (past or present) was not very common, and because chronic infections were very uncommon (and these chronic infections are the ones associated with heavy monocyte infiltrates and poor outcomes in previous studies), the power of this study to examine malaria associated changes is rather limited. Furthermore we introduce the presence/absence of CD68 cells as another way of stratifying the data; it is not clear what finding these cells in low numbers means (the normal number of these cells is not known), especially in the absence of malaria. There is a certain percentage of CD68+ cells in the blood in normal subjects, so there will be some chance of finding one or more of these cells on a normal placental section. Many other studies have reported increased inflammatory cells infiltration mainly monocytes and macrophages in placental malaria infections [
17]. These inflammatory cells might have an important role in
P. falciparum clearance and phagocytosis of the infected red blood cells. On the other hand these inflammatory cells might lead to functional damage in placental villi, and disturb feto-maternal exchange, leading to low birth weight [
12,
13]. The mean birth weight was not different between women with placental malaria infection/with monocytes macrophages infiltrates and those women without placental malaria infections/cellular infiltrates. This goes with the previous observations where the placental malaria infections were not associated with low birth weight in eastern Sudan [
5,
20]. The lack of association between malaria infections and low birth weight might be explained by the small sample size of these studies and the lack of power. However, these cellular infiltrates were associated with reduction in birth weight [
13] and malaria infections were known to be associated with low birth weight [
12]. Due to fund constraints, only the CD 68 marker for monocytes and macrophages was investigated in the current study. The other marker e.g. CD20 and other inflammatory cells (B, T lymphocytes were not investigated. However, Ordi et al. [
13] reported that, malaria parasitized placentae, especially in primigravidae, had the most significant increase in all inflammatory cellular types (except NK cells) and these infiltrates were associated with reduction in birth weight.