Previous research had established that children had worse cognitive outcomes when their pregnant mother had malaria, so this study explored behavioral outcomes, as well as whether the preventative treatment for malaria would affect the children’s brain development.
More than 300 pregnant women were involved in this five-year study. Each of them was randomly assigned to a specific preventative treatment for malaria during their pregnancy, and each of the children involved was also randomly assigned a preventative treatment for malaria. The children were then evaluated for language, motor functions, and cognition starting when they were one year old. Researchers also screened the children for attention, memory and behavioral issues when they were two and three years old. More effective malaria prevention greatly decreased malaria in mothers and children, but better prevention did not lead to better cognition or behavioral scores.
