Hello! I have been a doctor for 21 years. My name is Georgy Olegovich Sapego. In this article I will talk about eosinophils.
Eosinophils are a type of white blood cell. They usually do not live in blood, but in tissues. That is, rather, around the blood vessels. There are hundreds of times more of them than in blood. Until now, they have not found out exactly what they are doing there.
It happens that there are many eosinophils in the blood and in the tissues. Sometimes it means nothing, and sometimes you can die.
Eosinophils are like a time bomb. If they are activated, they begin to secrete various substances that damage organs.
Elevated eosinophils
They increase with allergies, if there are worms, with various autoimmune diseases and even with tumors.
Decreased eosinophils
This happens at high temperatures, with bacterial and viral infections, or during treatment with glucocorticoids.
Organ damage
It happens that there are not too many eosinophils in the blood, but this is already enough for the eosinophils in the tissues to begin to destroy everything that comes to hand.
Eosinophils have an arsenal of caustic chemistry inside that they can scald nerves and epithelium in different organs.
Eosinophils can also cause smooth muscle spasm and inflammation.
They also release cytokines that provoke the formation of scar tissue in organs. We have already discussed this in the story about cytokine storm.
Usually eosinophils do all these nasty things when they leave the blood vessels in the tissue. In the blood, they behave decently and pretend to be good.
Target Organs
Eosinophils have a favorite spot where they like to be dirty. These are the skin, respiratory tract and gastrointestinal tract. It hurts, but bearable. But if eosinophils take hold of the heart or nervous system, then you can die.
So eosinophils are not just some kind of worms or allergies.
