Beschreibung:
<jats:p><jats:italic>Background.</jats:italic>Approximately one-third of the world population is infected with<jats:italic>M. tuberculosis</jats:italic>and helminths (Kariminia et al. (2009), Walson et al. (2010)). Pregnancy and Helminth infection are known to suppress the<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M1"><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mtext>T</mml:mtext></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mtext>H</mml:mtext></mml:mrow></mml:msub><mml:mn mathvariant="normal">1</mml:mn></mml:math>response (Kariminia et al. (2009), Elias et al. (2006)) on which the QuantiFERON Gold in Tube (QFT-GIT) assay, that measures the released IFN-<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M2"><mml:mrow><mml:mi>γ</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:math>upon<jats:italic>in vitro</jats:italic>stimulation with mycobacterial antigens, relies on (Thomas et al. (2010)).<jats:italic>Objective.</jats:italic>To determine whether QFT-GIT indeterminate result is significantly associated with helminth infection or not.<jats:italic>Methods.</jats:italic>In this cross-sectional study, eighty-five pregnant mothers were screened for parasitic and LTBI using Kato-Katz and QFT-GIT test-respectively,<jats:italic>Result.</jats:italic>The prevalence of helminth infection in pregnant mothers was 23 (27%) of this 17 (20%) was due to<jats:italic>Schistosoma mansoni</jats:italic>. Among the total of 85 study participants 26.8% were QFT-GIT positive and 14 (17%) had indeterminate results. Three samples (21.4%) were randomly selected from the indeterminate QFT-GIT results and retested to check the reproducibility of the assay and remained indeterminate. QFT-GIT indeterminate result showed significant association with helminth infection.<jats:italic>Conclusion.</jats:italic>Helminth infections were significantly associated with indeterminate QFT-GIT results in pregnant mothers. Therefore further study is important to evaluate the possible effect of helminth infection by excluding the effect of pregnancy, as pregnancy also downregulates cellular immunity.</jats:p>