How to increase platelets

What Happens If Platelet Count Is Low?

Platelets are blood cells that help regulate blood clotting, so a low platelet count can increase the risk of bleeding. A slightly low platelet count is usually harmless. But when the deficiency is significant, a person may experience bruising easily, prolonged bleeding from minor cuts, itching due to bleeding into the skin, and spontaneous bleeding from the nose or gums. Life-threatening bleeding can cause a significant decrease in the platelet count, especially after injury.

Answered by Dr. Marcel Freire Doctor of Medicine · 3 years of experience · Brazil

Low platelets or thrombocytopenia are medical terms when we refer to a decrease in the platelet count in the blood. The normal range for this cellular series is between 150,000 and 400,000 cells per mcL of blood. Many conditions, pathological or not, can cause a low platelet count in the blood, ranging from laboratory errors (including the formation of platelet aggregates, which falsely lower the count) to conditions that Infectious, inflammatory diseases, genetic diseases directly affect the count. or even as a secondary effect of organic diseases (as in dysfunctional organs, such as liver or spleen dysfunction, for example in the abduction of these cells). Platelets are the blood cells responsible for blood clotting (we say in medicine they are responsible for basic hemostasis), so when their number is low, a patient can expect to bleed. Bleeding from the gums when brushing the teeth that is not usually apparent (eg: bleeding gums). However, low platelet counts alone may not translate into clinical meaning, so some people have low platelet counts and do not bleed (because they are asymptomatic, or because levels are not low enough). . It is also important to emphasize that the quality of platelets is as important as the number of platelets, so defective platelets, even in normal numbers, cannot do their job properly, causing the patient to bleed Think.

Answered by Dr. Marcela Abonahman Pereira Specializing in Clinical Cardiology · 12 years of experience · Brazil

Thrombocytopenia is a condition in which the number of platelets in your blood is low. Platelets are blood cells that help blood clot. If your platelet count is low, you may bleed. So, signs and symptoms include easy or excessive bruising, superficial skin bleeding, prolonged bleeding from a cut, bleeding from your gums or nose, blood in your urine or stool, heavy menstrual flow. , including fatigue. and enlargement of the spleen is included.

Answered by Dr. Gustavo Campos Doctor of Medicine · 9 years of experience · Brazil

Nothing could happen. Low platelet count is not a problem by itself. However, a low platelet count can be problematic in the case of minor injuries that result in excessive bleeding. Minor organ injuries can be quite dangerous, especially if there is bleeding from the central nervous system.

The chicken pox and shingles viruses can become inactive in your neurons and reactivate and multiply

Cells secrete exosomes carrying molecules that play important roles in both health and disease.

More than 90 percent of the world's population has this virus, which causes chickenpox to be inactive in their nervous system. Most people contract the varicella zoster virus, or VZV, when they have chickenpox in children. For about a third of these people, the same virus will reactivate years later and cause shingles, also known as herpes zoster.

While most people are familiar with the painful rash that VZV causes shingles, a wide range of other complications can occur without any visible skin symptoms. The most severe is stroke, especially ischemic stroke, which occurs when the blood supply to the brain is cut off by narrowed arteries or clots.

People with shingles have a nearly 80 percent higher risk of stroke than people without the disease, and the risk remains elevated for a year after the rash resolves. The risk of stroke nearly doubles for those with facial acne, and triples for those under 40.

The mechanism behind this long-term stroke risk is largely unknown. Some researchers have suggested that direct infection of the arteries may be the cause. However, some characteristics of VZV infection suggest that this is not the complete picture. A common theme of VZV infections is chronic inflammation that spreads beyond the original site of infection, which may persist for weeks to months after the virus is no longer detectable and possibly reactivated.

I'm a neurovirologist, and my lab studies how VZV contributes to neurological disorders such as stroke and dementia. In our recently published research, we found that VZV reactivation triggers the formation of cellular vesicles, or exosomes, that carry proteins that support blood clotting and inflammation. An increase in these proteins can increase the risk of stroke.

Varicella zoster virus remains dormant in the nervous system after initial infection. © Science Photo Library - Heather Davis/Brand X Pictures via Getty Images The varicella-zoster virus remains dormant in the nervous system after initial infection. Exosomes carry blood clotting proteins.

Exosomes are tiny vesicles, or fluid-filled sacs, that form inside cells throughout the body. They are like duffle bags that carry cargo, such as proteins and nucleic acids, from the cell to distant tissues. Although essential for essential biological functions such as communication between cells, exosomes can also play a key role in disease progression and are drug targets for many diseases.

We wanted to see if shingles patients develop exosomes that carry proteins involved in blood clotting, increasing their risk of stroke. We therefore isolated exosomes from the blood of 13 patients with shingles rash and compared them with exosomes isolated from healthy donors.

When we analyzed the content of these exosomes, we found that shingles patients had nine times higher levels of clotting proteins than healthy patients. Moreover, we found that exosomes from shingles patients still had elevated levels of these proteins three months after their initial rash.

To functionally confirm that the contents of these exosomes can induce clotting, we treated platelets—cell fragments involved in blood clotting—with exosomes from Shanghai patients or healthy people. exposed We found that exposing platelets to shingles exosomes induced them to clump together and form aggregates with other types of blood cells, as they do in the formation of blood clots.

These findings suggest that exosomes may be a potential mechanism for how varicella zoster virus increases stroke risk in patients with shingles.

Exosomes (marked by white arrows) can carry a variety of molecules out of the cell. © IBM Research/Flickr Exosomes (marked with white arrows) can carry a variety of molecules out of the cell. Considering stroke with shingles

A Food and Drug Administration-approved vaccine to prevent shingles is available for adults age 50 and older and immunocompromised adults age 18 and older. However, people who are most at risk of stroke are those under 40 and ineligible for shingles. A large group of these individuals likely did not receive the chickenpox vaccine as children, because the chickenpox vaccine was only approved in the United States in 1995 and its use by adults at that time was quite low. . Although vaccination with the chickenpox vaccine significantly reduces the risk of shingles, it is still possible for a latent infection to reactivate and cause the disease.