I read with interest the demonstration by Volbeda et al 1 that clinical asthma control associates significantly with ‘lower activated eosinophil numbers in the bronchial wall, yet only weakly with sputum eosinophils’. I was particularly intrigued by the online supplemental information1: ‘EPX staining showed widely spread distribution of eosinophilic granules, not necessarily in close proximity to EPX+ cells. Therefore, degranulation of eosinophils was determined by quantification of the EPX immunopositive area by computer-assisted image analysis’. This statement suggests to me that …