What happens to your blood cell count if you have malaria?!

Question: What happens to your blood cell count if you have malaria?

I spent a couple months travelling through central america 12 months ago. For the past 3 weeks I've been having textbook malaria symptoms. I just had a blood test done which shows normal RBC but an elevated WBC count of 14,500 and Neutrophils way up at 12,000. The doctor can't figure out what it is so is putting me on a second round of antibiotics assuming I have a bacterial infection somewhere. Based on this blood report can I rule out Malaria or is it something i should go back to the doctor and mention?

Answers:

As far as I know, malaria's onset is a lot quicker than several months. I think that if it's been more than a few weeks between when you returned and when you started witnessing the symptoms, you probably didn't get it down there. I'm not saying you don't have it! They can't tell from a blood smear? I know that we looked at plasmodium in the lab, and you could see them in the actual blood cells. I'd say wait a few days to see if the antibiotics take care of it. If not, then go back to the doctor and mention the labwork. As far as I know, plasmodium destroys RBCs. Don't you get black urine from the heme in the destroyed RBCs? Been a while since I learned about malaria.

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What happens to your blood cell count if you have malaria?!

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