Anticoagulant-induced pseudothrombocytopenia after a plasmodium falciparum infection in a five-year-old child.

Pseudothrombocytopenia or artefactual thrombocytopenia is an abnormally low number of platelets due to their agglutination in a sample tube, with no ex vivo clinical translation. It occurs in ethylene diamine tetraacetic (EDTA) test tubes. Non-EDTA anticoagulants, such as citrate, fluoride oxalate, and heparin lithium, may be responsible for it, alone or in combination. It can occur in patients with autoimmune diseases, neoplasia, atherosclerosis, liver disease, or infections. We report the case of a 5-year-old child, who after falciparum malaria showed persistent thrombocytopenia. Further exploration has led to the conclusion of pseudothrombocytopenia due to three anticoagulants: EDTA, citrate, and fluoride oxalate.

Myeloblasts and atypical bone marrow: Fortuitous discovery of the filiarial nematode loa loa in the bone marrow during a work-up for prolymphocytic T-cell leukemia.

Loiasis is a chronic cutaneous disease caused by a filarial nematode for whom humans are the only definitive host: Loa loa, an African eyeworm transmitted by Chrysops flies. The parasite is seen on blood smears, in the skin, or during its ocular migration, but rarely on a bone marrow smear. We report the case of a 57-year-old Gabonese woman whose bone marrow aspiration during a work-up for T-cell leukemia fortuitously found Loa loa filariae.