I couldn't read the article since it's asking me to sign up. But the recommendation from our pediatrician is to only give our kid antipyretics once the temperature goes above 38 Celsius (under arm reading).
If Fever Helps Fight Infection, Should I Avoid Fever-Reducing Drugs? (2018)
21–30 of 43 posts
Re: If Fever Helps Fight Infection, Should I Avoid Fever-Reducing Drugs? (2018)
#22MILD fever may be beneficial yep; but it is puts extra metabolic stress on the body, not so great, worth considering antipyretics
Re: If Fever Helps Fight Infection, Should I Avoid Fever-Reducing Drugs? (2018)
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are a fair number of illnesses that will kill you or irreversibly damage you in three days. Not everything, just enough that this is bad advice without serious qualification.
That’s a low intersection of medical situations where you have three days to live, but can be saved by an OTC treatment.
I'm trying to think of a single one off-hand.
Possibly a very high fever or some sort of dehydrating bowel disease?
I guess you could call applying pressure to and binding a wound OTC, and you could possibly die if you simply choose not to do that?
Re: If Fever Helps Fight Infection, Should I Avoid Fever-Reducing Drugs? (2018)
#24My goto protocol is, wait for 3 days before starting any meds. If symptoms get worse than tolerable or new symptoms pop up then start some thing.
Should have clarified the last sentence. If things get worse or any new symptoms come up within that 3 days start something or see a doc
Re: If Fever Helps Fight Infection, Should I Avoid Fever-Reducing Drugs? (2018)
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are a fair number of illnesses that will kill you or irreversibly damage you in three days. Not everything, just enough that this is bad advice without serious qualification.
> If symptoms get worse than tolerable… I feel like this covers that problem, no? Surely the kill-you-in-three-days problems must be very painful? And if they aren’t very painful, I wouldn’t be going to the ER anyways, so I’d die before my scheduled visit — surely at least a week out in most places I’ve visited
You can become delirious by which point the confusion may make it rather difficult to get treatment. I had a delirious fever from the 2009 swine flu, the fever lasted 3 days and the delirious stage only about 3 hours. It was pretty rapid onset and I couldn’t stand up let alone walk so by the time I noticed it I was unable to seek help. I figured the die had been cast and I’ll see how it turns out. Clearly it turned out ok but there is an inherent selection criteria bias in my post.
My hypothesis for COVID, that I don’t have good data for, was that it has an unusual immune system reaction profile with the long fuse being an under reaction followed by an overreaction and this overreaction could result in particularly damaging spiking high fevers. As someone with a preexisting auto immune condition the overreaction in particular worried me. I was worried that the use of fever suppressants early on in that process might exasperate the effect. I planned ahead of time to ride out the fever and was doing research into changes in mortality rates for Covid based on fever suppressants and I couldn’t find good data and was surprised by the lack of research to what seemed to me to be an obvious and extremely important question. Not having a good answer, especially for the Covid specific case, I decided to risk it.
When I did get Covid, post vaccine, it was a very rapid onset with a spiking fever of 106f (41c) which I knew was dangerous but again by the time that happened I couldn’t seek help. Thankfully that only lasted for about an hour and by the end of the day the Covid was basically gone.
I think in general I will try to ride out flus without fever suppressants and my N of 1 experiment seems to suggest that works. But agains selection criteria bias on that one. I really wish proper research gets done on this but I guess there isn’t much money in it.
Re: If Fever Helps Fight Infection, Should I Avoid Fever-Reducing Drugs? (2018)
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s a low intersection of medical situations where you have three days to live, but can be saved by an OTC treatment.
I'm trying to think of a single one off-hand. Possibly a very high fever or some sort of dehydrating bowel disease? I guess you could call applying pressure to and binding a wound OTC, and you could possibly die if you simply choose not to do that?
Take the wound scenario. If you bandage it up but start getting a fever the next day then its a new symptom and it's better you see a doc
Re: If Fever Helps Fight Infection, Should I Avoid Fever-Reducing Drugs? (2018)
#27I take a long hot shower if I catch a cold virus - theory being to replicate the effects of elevated body temperature to kill virus, like a fever. It seems to be effective.
I also take a combination of Ibuprofen and Paracetamol (Acetaminophen), but only if I am in quite a lot of discomfort.
I find that in the winter it's important to eat warming food like soups, stews, broths. If I eat a cold sandwich or salad for lunch in the winter then I will often start to feel sick in the afternoon like I'm going down with a cold - a healthy evening hot meal will then restore my health.
Re: If Fever Helps Fight Infection, Should I Avoid Fever-Reducing Drugs? (2018)
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s a low intersection of medical situations where you have three days to live, but can be saved by an OTC treatment.
I'm trying to think of a single one off-hand. Possibly a very high fever or some sort of dehydrating bowel disease? I guess you could call applying pressure to and binding a wound OTC, and you could possibly die if you simply choose not to do that?
Best I have would be an allergic reaction (possibly with constant exposure where you just keep consuming the allergen). Suffering with increasingly restricted airways and not taking an antihistamine or epipen.
Re: If Fever Helps Fight Infection, Should I Avoid Fever-Reducing Drugs? (2018)
#29Is it possible that fever is a legacy feature? Like I would expect microbes specialized to the human/mammalian system environment to be able to deal with the relatively small temperature range of fevers. The selection pressure of fever is pretty well-suited to microbial evolution. It's very incremental, and microbes are known to live in a wide variety of temperatures. It seems much easier to get around than antibioti…
I like this idea. This also seems easy to approximate in vitro. Pathogen growth rate at body temp vs pathogen growth rate at fever temp. Are they markedly different?
When I have had a fever, it is not a significant absolute temperature change. Seems reasonable that the infection can handle it. It probably always needs to survive room temperate->human temps, so has mechanisms to cover a large gradient.
Re: If Fever Helps Fight Infection, Should I Avoid Fever-Reducing Drugs? (2018)
#30Is it possible that fever is a legacy feature? Like I would expect microbes specialized to the human/mammalian system environment to be able to deal with the relatively small temperature range of fevers. The selection pressure of fever is pretty well-suited to microbial evolution. It's very incremental, and microbes are known to live in a wide variety of temperatures. It seems much easier to get around than antibioti…
Also worth considering natural selection only cares about your genes being passed on, not about your survival. A fever response might be a good way to clear an infection when you're 20 and have yet to pass on your genes, but bad after 50 when evolution expects your grandkids to be able to take care of themselves.
It's even possible that an excessive fever that kills you fast and takes the deadly disease along with it, rather than forcing your kin to spend resources caring for you and potentially catching the disease themselves, is evolutionarily beneficial.