Pregnancy screening 2023

Screening of pregnant women, 2023

In 2023, 62,705 blood type analyses were performed among pregnant women. Almost all of these (99.9%) were tested for hepatitis B virus, HIV, and syphilis.

HIV-positive pregnant women

In 2023, 20 women were found to have HIV in pregnancy screening (0.03% of those tested). Among these, five women had newly diagnosed HIV, and 15 were known to be HIV-positive.

None of the newly diagnosed HIV-positive pregnant women were Danish. Four of the pregnant women with known HIV were Danish, three of the newly diagnosed and one of the known cases were from Ukraine. The rest of the women were predominantly from sub-Saharan Africa.

Pregnant women with syphilis

A total of 103 pregnant women tested positive in the screening test for syphilis in 2023. Confirmatory serological tests were performed on 99 of the women (96%). The confirmatory test makes it possible to identify both false positives/previously infected and pregnant women with current syphilis infection. The majority of the 99 were false positives or had antibodies from previous syphilis infections. Ten were diagnosed with current syphilis infection, corresponding to 0.02% of all screened pregnant women. For the remaining four, despite several attempts by SSI, no confirmatory test was performed.

Pregnant women with hepatitis B

Of the 62,705 pregnant women tested, 94 (0.15%) were positive for HBsAg (hepatitis B surface antigen), which is at the same level as last year, as shown in Figure 1.

Among pregnant women, hepatitis B in 2023 occurred exclusively among women who were either born abroad (N=89) or born to immigrants in Denmark (N=5) before the introduction of general screening of pregnant women for hepatitis B (November 2005), as shown in Figure 2. The most common countries of origin for pregnant women with hepatitis B were China, Romania, Eritrea, Afghanistan, and Vietnam. This reflects the distribution of hepatitis B prevalence among the population in Denmark.

There is also a significant predominance of women born abroad among HIV-positive pregnant women, as shown in Figure 3. In contrast, there are virtually no second-generation immigrants with HIV in pregnancy screening.

In contrast to hepatitis B and HIV, a significant proportion of women born in Denmark are found with syphilis in pregnancy screening, as shown in Figure 4. None of the pregnant women with syphilis were from Ukraine.

This report is also mentioned in EPI-NEWS 40/41b-2024.