has anyone ever had low platelets on here?

Hi, it's hard to say what's going on without more information.

Platelets are responsible for clotting. If your platelets drop below a certain level, you are at risk for either experiencing a serious bleed. The medical term low platelets is "thrombocytopenia." There are a number of reasons for having thrombocytopenia, and these reasons are broadly categorized:

1. disorders of platelet production:

2. disorders of platelet destruction.

3. disorders that are sequester platelets from the blood stream.

Platelet production disorders involve the bone marrow, which can either infiltrate or be directly toxic to the bone marraow.

Diseases that invade the bone marrow include cancers such as leukemia, but it can also include infections such as tuberculosis.

Also, there are innummerable drugs that are known to suppress the bone marrow with alcohol being the most infamous for its ability to cause thrombocytopenia. In addition, radiation therapy and chemotherapy for cancer patients are both know to be directly toxic to the bone marrow.

Finally there are other rare diseases that can infiltrate or suppress the bone marrow including sarcoidosis, myelofibrosis, and various viruses.

Regarding the diseases that destroy platelets, the list is equally long; however, the vast majority of these cases is also due to drugs. Most physicians subdivide the platelet destruction processes into processes that involve the immune system and those that do not.

When a person develops an immune-mediated thrombocytopenia, for some reason his body produces antibodies against the platelets, and so, his own immune system is actively destroy his own platelets.

The most common example is a drug, or medicine related, immune mediated thrombocytopenia. Other examples of these processes include certain types of leukemias, lymphomas, certain viruses such as HIV and herpes virus, and rare things like vasculitis.

Non-immune mediated causes include severe infections where the infection itself or byproducts of the infection causes a derangement of the clotting system (known as DIC). The other big non-immune mediated cause is a process called TTP. This process also occurs in the context of an infection, but the infection occurs prior to the development of thromobcytopenia, and is associated with confusion, kidney failure, rashes, and fevers. Finally, people with metal prosthetic heart valves can sometimes have thrombocytopenia due to shearing from the metal heart valves.

If there is no cause found, then the person is said to have ITP, which stands for either idiopathic thrombocytopenia (which is assumed to be immune-mediated).

When evaluating for all this causes, there is no single test that will give you an Aha! answer. Rather, it takes a carefull review of the entire history, and often it takes multiple visits to find a cause for low platelets. It appears that your doctor is ordering the right tests; however, be sure to have him explain the reasons for what he is doing.

Hope I was able to answer some of your questions!

if you dont have a source of infection such as degue, then you might have other problems in your blood.. your doctor is right about having a bone marrow aspiration since most of our RBC are produced from the long bones in our body other than liver. sorry to startle you, but i do hope its not a leukemia or anything..

It may be a condition known as ITP. I have not had this, but know others that do. Here is a link with some information.

http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/dci/Diseases/Itp/I...

Best wishes

Perhaps your body is fighting a bug? Simple as that

Usually, this means that you are trying to fight something off. But, it can also be that your blood is to thin.