Background Asthma is clinically related with the degree of eosinophilic inflammation.How asthmatic airway inflammation is affected is still poorly understood. So the effects of bone marrow-derived hematopoietic cells expressing CD34 (CD34+) and interleukin-5 (IL-5) receptor messenger RNA (IL-5R mRNA+) on asthmatic airway inflammation were investigated.Methods Balb/c mice were sensitized and challenged by ovalbumin (OVA) to establish an asthmatic model while control mice were sensitized and exposed to sterile saline. The mice were killed at different time points after being challenged by OVA and sterile saline. Then, bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF), peripheral blood (PB) and bone marrow (BM) were prepared. Eosinophils in PB (PBEOS) and BALF (BALFEOS), nuclear cells in BALF, PB and BM were counted. By flow cytometry, the percentage of CD34+ cells to nucleated cells in PB, BM and the relative number of CD34+ cells in PB (PBCD34+) and BM (BMCD34+) were calculated. Immunocytochemistry and in situ hybridization were used to investigate the hematopoietic cells with co-localized expression of CD34 and IL-5R mRNA in BM (BMCD34+ IL-5R mRNA+). The percentage of BMCD34+ IL-5R mRNA+ to BMCD34+ was calculated. Results Twelve hours after challenge by OVA, BALFEOS and PBEOS in the experimental group were significantly higher than those in the control group (P