CD44 and graft versus host disease: Thus, the eosinophils from steroid-treated patients without GVHD expressed higher levels of CD18, CCR3, CD49d, CD11c, CD23, and CD44 than did the eosinophils from cGVHD patients treated with systemic corticosteroids (Fig. 5b and c) In other words, systemic corticosteroids have an effect on activated cGVHD eosinophils, but have no effect (at least in terms of the markers studied) on the resting eosinophils of patients without GVHD.