Monday, May 24, 2010

Eosinophilic Esophagitis

Image found here

My post Gastrointestinal Effects of Sjogren's Syndrome is one of the most frequently visited on Reasonably Well. Although it was posted over a year ago, it continues to receive new comments.

Here's the most recent comment posted by Julie:
Hi there- I'm 39 and have had Sjorgrens for 2 years. I was also getting my throat dilated a year or so ago and they found EE. Immediately following my dilation my throat was very painful for about 3 months. I finally went on flovant for a few weeks and pain stopped. I've been fine until now. I'm 33 weeks pregnant and came down with a cold and then my throat got very painful again. It' s going on 3 weeks now, I've been on flovant again for about a week with no real improvement yet. I was thinking it was associated w/ EE so went back to GI and EE is not supposed to "hurt"..so thinking it might have to do with Sjorgrens....lack of mucus, can't heal, fragile throat lining etc. All I know is it really hurts and no one seems to know why. Need to probably go see Reumy, but reaching out to see if anyone experiences a very very very sore thoroat with SJorgrens? Can't find much on-line..
Thank you for any help you can provide!!

I'm thinking that the EE that Julie is referring to is eosinophilic esophagitis, which is a swelling of the esophagus caused by an infiltration of specific white blood cell - the eosinophil. EE is characterized by difficulty swallowing and changes to the tissue of the esophagus visible by endoscopy. You can read more about EE here, here, and here.

I have no personal or professional experience with EE, but was intrigued after reading the medical literature. Several sources allude to some kind of autoimmune link, but it appears as happens frequently in most autoimmune disease, that more research is needed. You can read a very detailed discussion about EE epidemiology, etiology, and pathology here.

I'm sure that Julie would appreciate hearing from others who may have experience or additional information regarding this distressing condition. 

1 comment:

oregonamy1972 said...

My almost 6 year old son has EE and I can say that the main symptoms he had were painful. He had a lot of vomitting and he would also frantically request milk to drink (this is ironic considering we've discovered that some of his EE is likely caused by a silent milk allergy). Based on what my son's scopes looked like I can't imagine that EE would be painful.

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