NEW YORK, Aug 31 (Praxis Press). Pregnancy is associated with in-creased susceptibility to malaria but whether this persists after pregnancy has not been investigated. To address this, Diagne and colleagues monitored residents of a village in Senegal where the rate of malarial transmission was high, and assessed exposure to malaria, parasitemia, and morbidity, from June 1, 1990, to December 31, 1998. They analyzed 71 pregnancies in 38 women from the year before conception through one year after delivery and found that the incidence of malaria was 20.2 episodes per 1000 person-months during the year preceding conception and 12.0 episodes per 1000 person-months during the period from 91 to 365 days after delivery. The incidence of episodes of malaria increased significantly during the second and third trimesters of pregnancy and reached a maximum of 75.1 episodes per 1000 person-months during the first 60 days after delivery. The adjusted relative risk of an episode of malaria was 4.1 during the first 60 days post partum as compared with the year preceding pregnancy. The duration of fever during the episodes of malaria was longer and the prevalence and density of asymptomatic malarial parasitemia were significantly higher during pregnancy and the early postpartum period than during the other periods. Women who live in areas with high rates of malaria transmission are most susceptible to malaria during the second and third trimesters of pregnancy and the early postpartum period.