Fever (also known as pyrexia) is one of the most common medical signs and is characterized by an elevation of body temperature above the normal range of 36.5–37.5 °C (98–100 °F) due to an increase in the temperature regulatory set-point. This increase in set-point triggers increased muscle tone and shivering.
As a person's temperature increases, there is, in general, a feeling of cold despite an increasing body temperature. Once the new temperature is reached, there is a feeling of warmth. A fever can be caused by many different conditions ranging from benign to potentially serious. There are arguments for and against the usefulness of fever, and the issue is controversial. With the exception of very high temperatures, treatment to reduce fever is often not necessary; however, antipyretic medications can be effective at lowering the temperature, which may improve the affected person's comfort.
Fever differs from uncontrolled hyperthermia, in that hyperthermia is an increase in body temperature over the body's thermoregulatory set-point, due to excessive heat production and/or insufficient thermoregulation.
Read more about Fever: Definition, Signs and Symptoms, Differential Diagnosis, Pathophysiology, Management, Epidemiology, History, In Other Animals
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... actuary issues apply to the antibacterial and antiviral effects of fever (increased body temperature) ... Fever has the future benefit of clearing infections since it reduces the replication of bacteria and viruses ... During sepsis, the resulting fever can raise BMR by 55%—and cause a 15% to 30% loss of body mass ...
... Fever is an important feature for the diagnosis of disease in domestic animals ... For example, a horse is said to have a fever above 101.0 °F (38.3 °C) ...
... Yellow Fever was a disease that caused thousands of deaths and many people to flee the afflicted areas ... It begins with a headache, backache, and fever making the patient extremely sick from the start, and gets its name from the yellow color of the skin, which develops in the third day of the illness ... Yellow Fever is transmitted by mosquitoes, when it bites an infected person it carries several thousand infective doses of the disease making it a carrier for life passing it from human to human ...
Famous quotes containing the word fever:
“When I was very young and the urge to be someplace was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked.... In other words, I don’t improve, in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable.”
—John Steinbeck (1902–1968)
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—Dalton Trumbo (1905–1976)