May 25, 2012
Topics A-Z Children's Health Autoimmune neutropenia and slightly high eosinophil count
Autoimmune neutropenia and slightly high eosinophil count |
|
Dear Ask The Doctor: Hello, My 6 year old daughter sufferes from many things. She is auto-immune netropenic which causes her blood work to be all messed up (currently her WBC is only 2.3). Her neutrophil count is almost nonexistent (only 6%). She also suffers from allergies and recently been diagnosed with asthma. I am hoping that someone with hemotology expertise may offer advice on her eosinophil count. It is slightly elevated 9%. Would this be inidicitive of her having a severe allergic reaction (possibly to her beloved dog) or could it simply be related to her abnormal blood make up. She has had 6 ear infections, 2 sinsus infections, and 2 cases of strep throat all in the last 6 months. I am ready to get rid of her pup but she is just devasted over this idea but I can not get any straight answers from any of her multiple doctors and feel that this may be the only thing I can do to try to help her. Given all of the above information, would you expect to see the eosinophil count higher if all of these problems were realted simply to allergies, or is this an extremely high count? Any information would be so greatly appreciated. Thank you advance to anyone who is willing to offer information. I can not seem to get any true answers from any of her doctors. I would say that the slightly high eosinophil count is negligible. As you mentioned, the white blood cells (examples are eosinophil and neutrophil) are counted as a percentage. This means that out of 100 white blood cells, 6 of them are neutrophils, 6 are eosinophils. Since her neutrophils are really low, there is a relative slight increase in eosinophils. In other words, the eosinophil count is not high per se. Although her allergies could contribute to the slightly high eosinophil count, that should be the least of your worries. That is not the main, significant problem here. Her immediate and serious problem is the auto-immune neutropenia since neutrophils are the first-line cells to combat infections. That explains why she is having recurrent infections. Since she is recently diagnosed with asthma, I don’t think it is a good idea to keep her dog. Yes, it will devastate her if her dog will be taken away from her but animal danders are also known to trigger or worsen asthma attacks. Worst case scenario is, if she will have an asthma attack and a respiratory infection on top of it (put into account she has low neutrophil count most of the time which makes her susceptible and easy to acquire infections), the consequences can be very serious and if left untreated, could be life-threatening. I strongly suggest you should give her dog to someone else or at least reach a compromise that she should not hold her dog all the time, or the dog can stay outdoors. You should also talk about this with your paediatrician. I do hope I have appeased your concerns and I wish you well always. |
|
| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 13 July 2011 ) |
|
|
|
|
