Sunday, January 3, 2016

What causes thrombocytopenia in malaria?

Hello everyone!

I see a lot of patients in the casualty with fever, chills & thrombocytopenia but to my surprise, they've been diagnosed with malaria (Instead of dengue). I was wondering what the mechanism is.

The speculated mechanisms leading to thrombocytopenia are: coagulation disturbances, splenomegaly, bone marrow alterations, antibody-mediated platelet destruction, oxidative stress and the role of platelets as cofactors in triggering severe malaria.

In uncomplicated cases of malaria, thrombocytopenia is the result of splenic pooling of platelets aggravated by a moderate decrease in platelet life span.

That's all!

-IkaN

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4 comments:

  1. AnonymousJanuary 4, 2016 at 8:41 AM

    Good work
    Won't coagulation disturbances be the result of thrombocytopenia rather than the mechanism behind it?
    Please do explain

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. IkaN (Nakeya Dewaswala, M.D.)January 4, 2016 at 9:15 AM

      Thanks.

      I think what they meant from coagulation disturbances is DIC. DIC rapidly consumes platelets causing thrombocytopenia.

      Here's the original article though: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21881757

      Delete
  2. UnknownMarch 16, 2016 at 12:20 AM

    Informative post.. can you please explain the mechanism of thrombocytopenia in dengue?

    ReplyDelete

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