Abnormal eosinophil morphology

What it means

An abnormal count or structure of eosinophils.

Eosinophils stain with acidophilic dyes including eosin red. They have a bilobed nucleus, are weakly phagocytic, and are involved in the immune defense against worms. Eosinophils are released into the peripheral blood in a phenotypically mature state, and are capable of undergoing activation and recruitment into tissues in response to appropriate stimuli, most notably cytokines interleukin-5 and the eotaxins. Eosinophils spend only a brief time in the peripheral blood (half-life of about 18 hours) before they migrate to the thymus or gastrointestinal tract, where they reside under homeostatic conditions. In response to inflammatory stimuli, eosinophils develop from committed bone marrow progenitors, after which they exit, migrate into the blood and subsequently accumulate in peripheral tissues where survival is prolonged.

Rare diseases that can present with this4

The range is how often this sign appears among people diagnosed with each disease — it is not a probability of having any of them. Many of these signs also occur in common, non-rare conditions, and Orphanet separately records 1 disease where this sign is specifically absent. A sign on this page is a conversation to have with a clinician, not a conclusion.

Part of the broader category

Also called: Abnormality of eosinophils