Mosquitoes are dastardly little things with the way biting humans and pets seems to be their entire life purpose. But an itchy red bump on your skin is no big deal at all in comparison to getting malaria. It was one of the most feared infectious diseases in the earliest part of the last century, and traveling to Sub-Saharan Africa back then meant a chance you’d die from it. That’s no longer the case, but malaria is still a very serious infection and some people may be wondering does malaria cause thrombocytopenia.  

That may become an even more legit question if you’re going to be travelling to parts of the world where people get malaria, and there are certainly some places in the world where a mosquito bite is a much larger cause for concern. This is why we’re talking about thrombocytopenia in malaria here, and the reason it’s an issue is because the low blood platelets count that will occur with thrombocytopenia can mean that blood doesn’t clot like it should. Proper blood clotting is extremely important in the big health picture. 

Looking at does malaria cause thrombocytopenia it’s helpful to understand the disorder in context, because a lot of people will have assume blood clots are bad. They certainly can and in worst-case scenarios they will lead to a stroke or heart attack. But if a person has thrombocytopenia their blood platelet deficiency means the exact opposite is a risk. They may end up with excessive blood loss from a wound that would otherwise have clotted up quite quickly.  

Stay Safe

Nowadays most of the times a person gets malaria they will only have to tolerate the sickness for a few weeks while they wait for a quinolone medication to work. It’s unlikely they’ll suffer a nasty gash during that time, but let’s also hope they don’t live with a Lorena Bobbitt at the same time. There are going to be times when you’re going to be in a world of trouble no matter how well your blood clotting response works, but again it’s super unlikely any type of wound like this is going to occur while you’re waiting to get over malaria.  

Enough about possible scenarios of this sort, and let’s get right to answering does malaria cause thrombocytopenia. It can happen, and a low blood platelet count is a frequent overall manifestation of falciparum and vivax malaria. It usually comes on early in the infection, but as the virus is countered by malaria treatment medication like Plaquenil the sufferer can expect thrombocytopenia to pass too. People who have had their spleen removed may want to be extra cautions about this possibility though because the spleen traps platelets so that they aren’t able to circulate in the bloodstream.  

This is related to does malaria cause thrombocytopenia because having excess platelets in the bloodstream can potentially mean the condition is worse and even more of them are lost in the event of a serious flesh wound. So be careful about avoiding cuts of any sort while you’re getting over malaria.