Everything you want to know about FEVER

1. What is fever?

Fever is the condition when the body temperature rises. In almost all cases the cause of the fever is an infection.

If we look in more detail a fever is being caused by chemicals that are called pyrogens that are flowing in the bloodstream of the patient’s body. These pyrogens influence the hypothalamus. This is the part of the brain that regulates the body temperature. The actual rise in body temperature happens when the pyrogens bind to certain receptors in the hypothalamus.

2. What causes a fever? 

When a person attracts a fever this almost always means they have an infection.

So, what causes infections? An infection is caused by either bacteria and viruses. There are no specific differences between a fever caused by bacteria and fevers that are the result of a virus.

Although in almost all cases an infection is the cause of a fever, there are other causes of fever:

• heat exhaustion
• inflammatory conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis
• a malignant tumor
• the use of certain medication like drugs to treat high blood pressure or seizures
• some immunisations such as diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis or pneumococcal vaccine
• in very few cases it remains unknown what causes or caused a fever.