Malarial pigment in a monocyte - Peripheral blood smear taken from a patient presenting with signs and symptoms suggestive of cerebral malaria due to infection with P. falciparum. It shows a monocyte with several dark, irregular, pigmented inclusions (arrows), representing hemoglobin from the patient's red cells incompletely degraded by the parasite (malarial pigment, hemozoin), released into the circulation during schizony, and phagocytosed by cells of the monocyte-macrophage system.
Kindly provided by Dr. German Pihan, Department of Pathology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA.
