title: Correlation of the severity of atopic dermatitis with absolute eosinophil counts in peripheral blood and serum IgE levels.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Although a number of epidemiological studies, showing incidence and prevalence of atopic dermatitis, were available, scant attention has been paid to the correlation between the parameters of the disease like severity, absolute eosinophil count and IgE level, which has been known to be associated inconsistently. Hence this study was undertaken.
  
  
  METHODS
  A total of 102 patients of atopic dermatitis, both children and adults, and 107 age matched controls were studied at the Pediatric Dermatology clinic, Institute of Child Health and department of Dermatology, AMRI-Apollo hospitals, Kolkata.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The average age of onset of atopic dermatitis was observed to be 4.55 years. Both the average absolute eosinophil count and IgE levels in patients of atopic dermatitis were significantly higher than that of the controls. Each of these parameters showed significant correlation with severity of the disease and showed a nonhomogeneous distribution reflected by significant association with personal history of bronchial asthma and family history of atopy, when both parents were atopic.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our study shows that clinical activity of the disease as recorded by the "SCORAD" index can be used as an indicator of the hematological abnormalities as well as to some extent as a prognostic indicator. Family history of atopy correlates with the hematological abnormalities only if both parents are involved and bronchial asthma is the only associated atopic condition which correlates with the parameters of the disease .
authors.affiliation: Departments of Dermatology, Institute of Child Health, Kolkata, India. babyd@vsnl.net
authors.forename: Sandipan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Dhar
authors.forename: Rajib
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Malakar
authors.forename: Soumen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chattopadhyay
authors.forename: Subhra
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Dhar
authors.forename: Raghubir
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Banerjee
authors.forename: Apurba
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ghosh
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D015415:Biomarkers / Q000097:blood; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003876:Dermatitis, Atopic / Q000097:blood* / Q000175:diagnosis*; D004804:Eosinophils; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007073:Immunoglobulin E / Q000097:blood* / Q000378:metabolism; D007223:Infant; D007958:Leukocyte Count; D008297:Male; D011379:Prognosis; D012016:Reference Values; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012720:Severity of Illness Index
chemical_list: D015415:Biomarkers; D007073:Immunoglobulin E