• Mayo Clinic Minute: What is eosinophilic esophagitis and why is it becoming more common?

a man looking like he's coughing or choking, maybe gasping for air, while loosening his tieEveryone experiences the choking feeling of food getting caught in his or her esophagus occasionally, but roughly 1 in 2,000 people experiences it constantly. For those people, it's caused by a condition called eosinophilic esophagitis, or EOE.

Doctors didn't fully identify EOE until around 2000, and didn't start regularly diagnosing it in adult patients until around 2006. Since then, EOE has become more common.

In this Mayo Clinic Minute, Dr. Jeffrey Alexander, a Mayo Clinic gastroenterologist and hepatologist, explains what causes EOE and the mystery of why it's growing in prevalence. Ian Roth reports.

Watch: The Mayo Clinic Minute

Journalists: Broadcast-quality video pkg (0:59) is in the downloads. Read the script.