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Patients who take medication often experience low platelet counts. When this occurs, the task for the clinician is to determine whether the thrombocytopenia is disease-related or drug-related. Certain medications can either decrease platelet production or induce antibodies that act against platelet-membrane glycoproteins and, thereby, cause platelet destruction. The latter mechanism is relatively uncommon, but discontinuing a drug that is having this effect might prevent a serious or fatal hemorrhage.
An international team of investigators used three sources to identify drugs suspected of inducing thrombocytopenia: case reports of drug-induced immune thrombocytopenia (DITP) published during more than 10 years, adverse drug events reported to…