What is the evidence of increased eosinophils in children in the blood?

Elevated eosinophils in children in the blood cause parents to experience a natural anxiety. And not only because of anxiety about the health of your baby, but also as a result of unrest for your own health, because often this phenomenon has a hereditary nature. But before taking any measures to normalize the level of eosinophils, it is necessary to understand what they generally represent and for what reasons their quantity can vary in blood.

Eosinophils: the norm in a child

These cells, formed in the bone marrow - a kind of leukocytes. With the blood flow, eosinophils enter the digestive tract, the lungs, capillaries of the skin covers, where they perform their basic functions: phagocytic, antihistaminic, antitoxic. In the body, their main purpose is the absorption and dissolution of foreign proteins.

Depending on the age of the child, the quantitative level of these cells in the blood also varies. Thus, in a newly born child, eosinophils may account for up to eight percent of all leukocytes, in children under 13 years of age, they should not be more than seven percent, and for children over 13, no more than five percent. It is worth worrying if the indicators are high. Eosinophils in a child in the blood in increased amounts are called eosinophilia. It is detected by a general blood test.

Elevated eosinophils in children: causes

Moderate growth in the blood of these cells (when they do not exceed 15 percent of the number of all leukocytes) usually indicates reactive eosinophilia, which is a reaction of the body to the effect of an allergen, which is often medicines or milk (cow). If increased eosinophils are detected in children who have just been born, it can be assumed that the bone marrow intensively produced cells as a result of the presence of intrauterine infection. In this case, they speak of the hereditary nature of eosinophilia.

Elevated eosinophils in older children may indicate fungal lesions, skin diseases, helminthic invasion. When their share of the total number of leukocytes exceeds 20 percent, they diagnose a hypereosinophilic syndrome, stating the fact that the lungs, brain, heart are affected.

If the hygiene rules are not observed in conditions of high humidity and parasites are infested with heat, there is a possibility of developing a syndrome of tropical eosinophilia, which are signs of shortness of breath, asthmatic cough, and the presence of eosinophilic infiltrates in the lungs. Sometimes an increase in the amount of eosinophils in the blood can accompany blood diseases (myeloleukemia, lymphoma), the development of malignant tumors, vasculitis. Penetration into the children's body of staphylococci, a lack of magnesium ions, too, can lead to the growth of cells.

Treatment

Reactive eosinophilia does not need treatment - the number of cells will decrease gradually by itself as the disease that caused such a condition is cured. In the case of diagnosis of hypereosinophilic syndrome or hereditary eosinophilia, the administration of drugs depressing the production of this type of leukocytes may be prescribed.