Acute plasmodium vivax malaria presenting with pancytopenia secondary to hemophagocytic syndrome: Case report and literature review

Abstract

Pancytopeni,a as an initial manifestation of acute plasmodium vivax malaria is extremely rare and mainly reported with plasmodium falciparum. We report a 37- year old Nepali patient who recently came to Saudi Arabia and presented with a three-week history of intermittent fever, chills and rigor. She was found to have spleenomegaly, pancytopenia, hyperferrtinemia, and hypofibronogenemia with positive peripheral blood smear for plasmodium vivax. The patient had a full recovery from pancytopenia with oral chloroquine.

Keywords

• Pancytopenia
• plasmodium vivax
• hemophagocytosis
• malaria
• bone marrow failure.