Positive blood culture results after Plasmodium falciparum diagnosis

Abstract

We describe a case of falsely positive blood culture results due to the presence of Plasmodium falciparum in the cultured blood specimen. Although awareness among health care professionals of this phenomenon has been reported in the literature, we discovered that attending physicians and house staff at our institution were largely unaware of this phenomenon. Similarly, laboratory staff and technologists therein had little experience identifying this organism on Gram-stained blood smears. We believe that this report will serve as a useful reminder to some readers and will broaden the differential diagnoses generated by others.