A passing remark launched the project that will be described at the Experimental Biology 2013 conference in Boston on Monday. A poster, presented by undergraduate Ashley McMichael from Albany State University, has preliminary data that hint that there is an association between a rare pregnancy condition and malaria.

The remark that launched the project was made by a collaborator of Julie Moore, a malaria expert at the University of Georgia. Moore was visiting her collaborator, pediatric pathologist Carlos Abramowsky at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (affiliated with Emory University), armed with placental tissue slides collected from women living in western Kenya, a region where malaria is rampant. While viewing the slides, Moore recalls Abramowsky commenting, “Wow, this is a really interesting case of chorangiosis.” And her reaction was, “Oh, what is chorangiosis?” [Read more…]