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Eosinophilia is a term that means that a specific type of immune cell is at higher-than-normal concentrations in your bloodstream. And it can actually tell a doctor a lot about what’s going on in your body. It can be an indication of everything from parasitic infection to cancer. But when it comes to fibromyalgia, eosinophilia is a good indication that you’re also suffering from another, related condition called an autoimmune disorder.
People with fibromyalgia are at a much higher risk of developing autoimmune disorders, like lupus, than the general population. For a long time, that link made people speculate that fibromyalgia itself was an autoimmune disorder. But the truth is a bit more complicated. So, what exactly is eosinophilia? What’s the link between autoimmune disease and fibromyalgia? And what can you do about it?
What Is Eosinophilia?
Eosinophils are a type of immune cell. Your body naturally produces small amounts of them to help fight infections. Usually, they’re an important part of keeping you healthy. But sometimes, these cells can build up in the tissue of the body, which leads to inflammation of the tissue.
That inflammation itself is a part of the immune system. Inflammation of tissue helps to separate it from the rest of the body and isolate dangerous infections. But when you have eosinophilia, the cells that cause inflammation group together and trigger excessive swelling of the tissue, which can damage it over time.
The best way to diagnose eosinophilia is with a simple blood test. Your doctor can test the levels of eosinophils in your blood and determine if they are higher than normal.
There are a lot of different things that can cause this condition. Any kind of infection can trigger it, such as infection by a parasite or fungal spore. And allergies are another normal cause as foreign substances that aren’t dangerous trigger your body’s immune response as if they were. But when it comes to fibromyalgia, one of the most common causes is an autoimmune disease.
Autoimmune Disease And Fibromyalgia
An autoimmune disease is a condition where the body’s immune system begins to attack its own cells. Basically, your immune system becomes conditioned to view your own tissue as it would foreign bacteria and try to destroy it. This is what leads to the build of eosinophils in the tissue.
There are many different kinds of autoimmune conditions like lupus or Sjogren’s syndrome. The primary distinction is based on which tissue the immune system seems to be targeting. But having fibromyalgia makes you much more likely to develop an autoimmune condition and vice versa.
We aren’t completely sure why this is the case. But it seems that the majority of evidence discredits the idea that fibromyalgia itself is an autoimmune condition. For instance, people with fibromyalgia don’t have elevated levels of immune cells in the blood, which is a key indicator of an autoimmune disease.
In addition, fibromyalgia doesn’t lead to the levels of systemic tissue inflammation that you typically see in these diseases.
But it could be that the link is psychological. We know that stress makes you significantly more likely to develop an autoimmune disorder. And few conditions are as stressful as fibromyalgia. It could be that the stress of conditions like lupus and fibromyalgia contribute to making each condition more likely to lead to the other.
What Can You Do?
If you’re struggling with systemic inflammation caused by eosinophilia, there are a few things that doctors can do to treat it. And the basic idea behind all the forms of treatment is finding a way to limit the inflammation the condition causes.
There are a few different medications that doctors use to do that. The first is basic, over-the-counter painkillers like aspirin and ibuprofen. These drugs are called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and they work by blocking the production of an enzyme in the blood that causes inflammation. In addition, they can help manage the pain caused by autoimmune conditions.
There are also corticosteroids. Corticosteroids are a form of hormone that the body produces in response to inflammation. And your doctor can prescribe synthetic forms of corticosteroids to help your body fight inflammation.
Finally, your doctor can prescribe a kind of drug called immunosuppressants. Immunosuppressants work by lowering the ability of your body to produce the cells that cause inflammation.
So, let us know. do you have any experience with eosinophilia? Do you think it’s related to fibromyalgia? What did you do to treat it? Tell us in the comments section below.
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