Journal article
Plasmodium in the bone marrow: case series from a hospital in Pakistan, 2007-2015
- Abstract:
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Background
Malaria is a life-threatening, multisystem disease caused by the plasmodial parasite with a global incidence of approximately 229 million annually. The parasites are known to have unique and crucial interactions with various body tissues during its life cycle, notably the liver, spleen, and recent work has shown the bone marrow to be a reservoir of infection.
Methods This study is a case series of patients in whom examination of bone marrow revealed malarial parasites. A retrospective record review of 35 parasite-positive bone marrow specimens examined at Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH), Karachi, Pakistan, over the years 2007 to 2015 was conducted. Bone marrow aspirates were collected as per International Council for Standardization in Haematology (ICSH) guidelines.
Results The median age of patients was 22 years (range 1–75), and 60 % (n = 21) were male. 22 patients had evidence of Plasmodium falciparum, 12 had evidence of Plasmodium vivax and 1 patient had a mixed infection. Gametocytes and trophozoites were the most common stages identified on both peripheral blood and bone marrow examinations. Indications for bone marrow examination included fever of unknown origin and the workup of cytopenias and malignancies.
Conclusions The incidental finding of Plasmodium in samples of bone marrow suggests the reticuloendothelial system may be regularly harbour these parasites, be the infection acute or chronic in character.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 1014.2KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1186/s12936-021-03792-1
Authors
- Publisher:
- BioMed Central
- Journal:
- Malaria Journal More from this journal
- Volume:
- 20
- Issue:
- 1
- Article number:
- 254
- Publication date:
- 2021-06-08
- Acceptance date:
- 2021-05-29
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1475-2875
- Pmid:
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34103036
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1183112
- Local pid:
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pubs:1183112
- Deposit date:
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2021-07-27
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Shaikh et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2021
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2021. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativeco mmons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/ zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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