Frequency of Esophageal Eosinophilia in a Pediatric Population from Central Brazil

Here we report a retrospective cross-sectional study on Esophageal eosinophilia (EsEo) frequency in Brazil, for 2, 425 pediatric patients with symptoms associated with gastroesophageal diseases in 2012. EsEo is defined by >= 15 eosinophils per high power field (400x) and confirmed through histological analyses of esophageal biopsies. Overall, 126 patients had EsEo equating to a frequency of 5.2%. There was a significant difference between the endoscopic features of patients with EsEo, where 10.7% had erosive esophagitis, 3.0% had non-erosive esophagitis and 1% showed normal esophageal mucosa. According to the interaction of the variables in the Classification and Regression Tree Analysis, most patients diagnosed with EsEo were older males with erosive esophagitis. On the other hand, the lowest frequency of EsEo was found among younger females with non-erosive esophagitis/normal mucosa. Environmental conditions, including climate variation and changes, were observed in association with EsEo, supporting a potential role for environmental factors in its pathogenesis. There was an inverse correlation between the number of EsEo, rainfall and humidity. EsEo is a relatively frequent finding in the pediatric population of Brazil with symptoms of gastroesophageal diseases. Both clinical and histological examinations of patients are important for a reliable diagnostic of EsEo cases and to patient care.