Background

We conducted a meta-analysis to assess the eosinophil counts in the small intestine and colon of children without obvious gastrointestinal disease.

There are now a variety of viewpoints on eosinophil counts in the small intestine and colon of children without obvious gastrointestinal disease, and there are not many thorough assessments that are pertinent.

Methods

A systematic literature search up to July 2022 was performed and 2378 related studies were evaluated. The chosen studies comprised 1800 children without obvious gastrointestinal disease participated in the selected studies' baseline trials; 607 of them were colonic eosinophilia, while 1193 were normal. Odds ratio (OR), and mean difference (MD) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated to assess the eosinophil counts in the small intestine and colon of children without obvious gastrointestinal disease by the dichotomous, and contentious methods with a random or fixed effect model.

Results

The colonic eosinophilia resulted in significantly higher cell counts in the duodenum and terminal ileum (MD, 9.66; 95% CI, 6.50-12.81, p<0.001) compared to the normal for children without obvious gastrointestinal disease.

However, no significant difference was found between colonic eosinophilia and normal for children without obvious gastrointestinal disease in cell counts in the large intestine and the rectum (MD, 13.25; 95% CI, 0.17-26.33, p=0.05).

Conclusions

The colonic eosinophilia resulted-in-significantly-higher-cell-counts-in-the-duodenum-and-terminal-ileum,-however,-no-significant-difference-was-found-in-cell-counts-in-the-large-intestine-and-the rectum compared to the normal for children without obvious gastrointestinal disease. The small sample size of 8 studies out of 15 and the small number of studies in certain comparisons calls for care when analyzing the results.