Thrombocytopenia and its Comparison with Plasmodium Vivaxand Plasmodium Falciparumin Malaria Patients
Material type: ArticleDescription: 140-144 pISSN:- 0030-9842
Item type | Current library | Call number | Vol info | Status | Date due | Barcode |
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Articles | Periodical Section | Vol.61, No.4 (October-December,2022) | Available |
Background : Malaria in Pakistan is a serious public health problem and thrombocytopenia can serve as diagnostic predictive marker. Objective : The objective of present study was to find out the frequency of plasmodium vivaxand falciparum in malaria patients and to compare the frequency of thrombocytopenia in patients effected by plasmodium falciparumversus vivax.Study type, settings & duration : This observational cross-sectional study was conductedat Department of Medicine, Jinnah Hospital, Lahore from February2018to July2018.Methodology : Fever more than 100°F for >3 days and >2 hours daily along with evidence of presence of >1 parasite of plasmodium on microscopic examination of thick smear of blood was labeled as malaria. Subsequently, depending on the type of parasite on microscopic examination of thin smear of blood (>1per film) the patients were labeled plasmodium falciparumand plasmodium vivax. Thrombocytopenia was defined as a platelet count <150,000 per mm3. After taking informed written consent, 236 patients of malaria were enrolled using non-probability consecutive sampling technique. Approximately three ml of blood was taken from each patient for microscopic examination of plasmodium type and platelet count measurement. SPSS version 17.0 was used for data entry and analysis. Data was stratified and chi square test applied keeping p-value <0.05 significant. Results : Mean age was 42.14±13.5 years with 123(52.1%) females. Seventy two (30.5%) patients had previous history of malaria. Mean duration of fever was 4.61±0.6 days. There were 88 (37.3%) patients with plasmodium falciparumand 148 (62.7%) had plasmodium vivax. Thrombocytopenia was seen in 41 (17.3%) patients. Out of the 88 patients with plasmodium falciparum, 11 (12.5%) patients had thrombocytopenia while it was seen in 30 (20.27%) patients out of 148 with plasmodium vivax. Conclusion : Plasmodium vivaxwas more commonly seen in our population. Over all, thrombocytopenia was seen in 17.3% malaria patients while frequency of thrombocytopenia was higher in malaria patients affected by plasmodium vivaxas compared to those affected from plasmodium falciparum.