VWF and malaria: IL-6 has been reported to inhibit the ability of plasma enzyme ADAMTS13 to cleave full-length VWF (Bernardo et al., 2004), possibly leading to procoagulant events characteristically seen in severe malaria, including the adhesion and clumping of platelets to circulating or endothelial surface-anchored ultra large VWF multimers (Bridges et al., 2010).