Thrombocytopenia in malaria

Objective: malaria is a major health problem in south asia. it can be associated with many complications. thrombocytopenia is the most common hematological complication of malaria. our aim was to assess the severity and frequency of thrombocytopenia in malaria. design: this was a descriptive case-series study. a total of 69 admitted patients diagnosed with malaria were assessed for thrombocytopenia using automated quantitative d3 analyzer. the data was analyzed using spss version 16.0. the results were obtained in numbers and percentages. data was expressed as means with standard deviation. results: out of the sample population 64 patients were diagnosed with vivax malaria and 3 with falciparum malaria while 2 patients had mixed infection. about 86% of patients with vivax malaria had thrombocytopenia while 66% of patients with falciparum malaria had thrombocytopenia. mean platelet count in vivax malaria was 84.02×103/μl with a range of 15-213×103/μl. platelet count of <20,000/μl was seen in only 2 patients with vivax malaria and none of the patients with falciparum malaria. conclusion: thrombocytopenia is a common feature in malaria. in patients having fever with thrombocytopenia,malaria should be on top of differential diagnosis. viral hemorrhagic fevers can also present as fever but in these cases the complete blood counts has other features such as high hematocrit and leucopenia along with thrombocytopenia. our finding can have therapeutic implications in the context of avoiding unnecessary platelet transfusion with the relatively more benign course in vivax malaria. in our study the commonest cause of thrombocytopenia in malaria was vivax malaria.