Granulocytosis

In medicine, granulocytosis is the presence in peripheral blood of an increased number of granulocytes, a category of white blood cells. Often, the word refers to an increased neutrophil granulocyte count, as neutrophils are the main granulocytes.

Causes

An increase in eosinophil granulocyte is known as eosinophilia.

Granulocytosis can be a feature of a number of diseases:

• Infection, especially bacterial
• Malignancy, most notably leukemia (it is the main feature of chronic myelogenous leukemia, CML)
• Autoimmune disease

Prognostic relations

In cardiovascular disease, increased white blood cell counts have been shown to indicate a worse prognosis.

See also

• Agranulocytosis
• Complete blood count
• Bandemia