Causes of hypereosinophilia in 100 consecutive patients

Hypereosinophilia (HE, persistent peripheral blood eosinophilia > 1.5 × 10⁹ /L) and hypereosinophilic syndrome (HES, HE with end-organ damage) are classified as primary (due to a myeloid clone), secondary (due to a wide variety of reactive causes), or idiopathic. Diagnostic evaluation of eosinophilia is challenging, in part because secondary causes of HE/HES such as lymphocyte-variant HES (L-HES) and vasculitis are difficult to diagnose, and emerging causes such as immunoglobulin G4-related disease (IgG4-RD) have rarely been examined.

We reviewed 100 consecutive patients with HE/HES who underwent extensive evaluation for primary and secondary eosinophilia at a single tertiary care center to determine causes of HE/HES in a modern context.

Six patients had primary HE/HES, 80 had a discrete secondary cause identified, and 14 had idiopathic HE/HES. The most common causes of secondary eosinophilia were L-HES/HES of unknown significance (L-HESus) (20), IgG4-RD (9), and eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis (EGPA) (8).

In contrast to other large published series of HE/HES, most patients in this study were found to have a discrete secondary cause of eosinophilia and only 14 were deemed idiopathic. These findings highlight the importance of extensive evaluation for secondary causes of eosinophilia such as L-HES, IgG4-RD, and EGPA.