Neutropenia in Toddlers

[LouiseBlack]

My 3 year old son has suffered from conjunctivitis, ear infections and viruses continualling since birth. He always has a chest cough and tends to have little energy at times during the day. He's been hospitalised for anal fissures, osteomyletis and anal absesses, pnemonia (pneumonia) twice, all with neutropenia (0.03-0.04). He's has a 6 week run of bloodtests twice weekly and has had a bone marrow extraction which appeared OK so they didn't do further testing. His pead. thinks it could be cyclic but are unable to establish a cycle. Just last week my 15 month old ended up in hospital with osteomytelis and found that his neutrophil count was 0. He had G-CSF and after three shots, his levels went to 1 and then dropped to .5. Once he received his 4th shot, his levels went up to 9 and have since normalised at 4. He's been healthy since birth with only the occasional virus, though he, too, always has a chesty cough.

They will be re-testing the boys now that it seems to be a genetic thing. Can you make any suggestions on where we can go from here? They are having blood tests done in a couple weeks (neutrophil function/chemotaxis bacteriocidal activity/oxidative burst and CD11/18 screening). Can you tell me what they are looking for in these tests and could they be looking into something else as well.

Can you make suggestions on what I may be able to give the boys to avoid getting so sick?

[nurse12hr]

I found this for you:

http://medicine.ucsd.edu/peds/Pediatric%20Links/Links/HematologyOncology/Diag%20and%20Mngmt%20of%20Chronic%20Neutropenia%20During%20Childhood%20Ped%20Clin%20of%20NA%20June%201996.htm

Hopefully it will help.  I don't have much else that I could tell you.

[Ray11]

So how is your son doing now. Im curious because I have a son who is 2yrs old. He is also neutropenic, he has been in the hospital 3 times in the last 3 months. The last time that he was in the hospital which was 2 weeks ago, he had a bone marrow biopsy done. Turns out that he does not have cancer(thank God) but they do not know why he is neutropenic. We found out he was neutropenic in March of this yr 2009. Since he was born he has always been prone to infections. But they never told me he was neutropenic untill now. I asked about the G-CSF shots and they said that it is not recomended. I have heard from another person whos son recieved the shots that it worked for them.
I would like to know how things are going for your son now. Since he is older now I hope that he grew out of it. I wish you luck.