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Fever

Condition Overview:

When you or your children aren't feeling well, one of the first things you may do is check for a fever. Although a fever isn't an illness itself, it's usually a sign that something's going on in your body. Yet fevers aren't necessarily bad. In fact, they seem to play a key role in helping your body fight off a number of bacterial and viral infections.

If you're an adult, a fever may be uncomfortable, but it usually isn't dangerous unless it measures 103 F or higher. For very young children and infants, however, even slightly elevated temperatures may indicate a serious infection. In newborns, a subnormal temperature — rather than a fever — may be a sign of serious illness.Because a fever can occur with many different conditions, other signs and symptoms can often help identify the cause. If you don't know why you have a fever, it's best not to try to lower your temperature. This may only mask your symptoms and make it harder to determine the cause. In addition, some experts think that aggressively treating all fevers actually interferes with your body's immune response. That's because the viruses that cause colds and other respiratory infections thrive at cool temperatures. By producing a low-grade fever, your body may actually be helping eliminate the virus. What's more, most fevers go away in a relatively short time — usually within a few days.

When a fever starts and your body tries to elevate its temperature, you feel chilly and may shiver to generate heat. At this point, you probably wrap yourself in your thickest blanket and turn up the heating pad. But eventually, as your body reaches its new set-point, you likely feel hot. And when your temperature finally begins to return to normal, you may sweat profusely, which is your body's way of dissipating the excess heat.A fever usually means your body is responding to a viral or bacterial infection. Sometimes heat exhaustion, an extreme sunburn or certain inflammatory conditions such as temporal arteritis — inflammation of an artery in your head — may trigger fever as well. In rare instances, a malignant tumor or some forms of kidney cancer may cause a fever.

Fever can be a side effect of some medications such as antibiotics and drugs used to treat hypertension or seizures. Some infants and children develop fevers after receiving routine immunizations, such as the diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTaP) or pneumococcal vaccines.

Sometimes it's not possible to identify the cause of a fever. If you have a temperature higher than 100.9 F for more than three weeks and your doctor isn't able to find the cause after extensive evaluation, the diagnosis may be fever of unknown origin. In most cases, though, the reason for your fever can be found and treated.