Dr. Komarovsky about eosinophils

Clinical analyzes are very difficult to parent decipher. Especially a lot of questions arise after receiving the results of blood tests. It is not only for diseases. This is a common method of assessing the general condition of a child.

If mothers and fathers are more or less clear with hemoglobin, some analysis indicators cause a real panic. One of these obscure terms are eosinophils. What to do if they are elevated to a child in the blood, says a famous pediatrician and author of books on children's health Yevgeny Komarovsky.

Eosinophils have a longer scientific name - eosinophilic granulocytes or eosinophilic leukocytes. These blood cells are leukocytes. Their task is to help the body respond to threats of a parasitic, allergic, tumor and inflammatory nature. This distinguishes them from other fellow leukocytes, which are focused mainly on the fight against viruses and bacteria.

• Have newborns and children up to 2 weeks in the blood normally contains from 1 to 6% of eosinophils.
• In infants from 2 weeks to a year - from 1 to 5%.
• Between a year and 2 years, the number of cells normally grows slightly and amounts to 1-7% of the total number of blood cells.
• In children from 2 to 5 years old - 1-6%.
• Starting from 6 years and up to adolescence, the norm is considered to be from 1 to 5%.

If the child has more than normal eosinophils, there may be several reasons for this:

• allergy (food, drug, seasonal), allergic rhinitis, bronchial asthma, atopic dermatitis. Eosinophil levels are often significantly higher in children who are allergic to drugs — several types of antibiotics, prednisone, anti-tuberculosis drugs, and aspirin;
• skin diseases;
• parasites in the body (eosinophilic leukocytes become more in the blood if the child has ascariasis, giardiasis, opisthorchiasis and a number of other ailments caused by parasites);
• infections (scarlet fever, measles, chickenpox, tuberculosis and a number of other diseases in the acute stage are accompanied by an increase in the level of eosinophils several times);
• tumors (especially malignant);
• hematopoietic diseases;
• lung disease.

With an insufficient level of eosinophils in the blood of a child, the doctor may suspect the following problems:

• inflammation (its most initial stage, when there are no other symptoms or they are mild);
• purulent infections;
• strong emotional shockstress
• heavy metal poisoning and other toxic chemicals.

If the child’s general condition is not disturbed, nothing hurts him, there are no complaints and reasons to assume his illness, then parents don’t need to do anything special, says Yevgeny Komarovsky.

If there are no pathologies, you can live in peace with elevated eosinophils, and after 4 months you can redo a CBC (for control).The fact is that it is not less often that an increase in these cells in the blood occurs during the period of recovery from some illness, most often bacterial. It will also take time to wait for the leukocyte formula of the blood to return to its normal state.

If repeated analysis after some time again shows a violation of the number of eosinophilic leukocytes, it makes sense to donate blood for the content of immunoglobulin E. This analysis will help the allergist to understand if there is a propensity for an inadequate reaction to some allergen. It is recommended to re-examine the flora in order to find parasites.

You can watch the video below, where Dr. Komarovsky tells in detail about the clinical analysis of blood in children.