01.
the brief
Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) infect 100 million people worldwide, yearly. Treatable STIs include trichomoniasis, chlamydia, gonorrhoeae, and syphilis. Mostly, these infections remain unnoticed because they often don’t cause symptoms. This is worrisome, because they do compromise healthy pregnancies.
Most resource-poor countries don’t have data on the prevalence of these STIs, and do not screen for these infections in pregnancy, because of the high costs of diagnostics.
02.
our goals
In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, we will follow a cohort of pregnant women.
We will investigate the prevalence of trichomoniasis, chlamydia, gonorrhoeae, syphilis, Mycoplasma genitalium, HSV-1, HSV-2, vaginal candidiasis and bacterial vaginosis.
We will evaluate the diagnostic performance of two point-
of-care tests for the diagnosis of trichomoniasis.
We will evaluate a serology-based point-of-care test for trichomoniasis.
03.
our approach
At AHRI hospital, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, we will recruit 500 pregnant women during their first antenatal care visit. Women will be investigated clinically according to the standard of care and data on reproductive health will be gathered by means of questionnaires.
Vaginal swabs, dried blood spots for serology and urine will be collected. Reference testing includes Nugent scoring for bacterial vaginosis and qPCR on DNA extracts from vaginal swabs. The following point-of-care tests will be evaluated:
Serological point-of-care test to detected Trichomonas-specific antibodies, this test will be used on finger capillary blood. One RPA-based test will be used on vaginal swabs.