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Is pyrexia a protective physiological response?
What is fever & pyrexia?
Can pyrexia be treated?
Sep 4, 2023 · Introduction. Fever, or pyrexia, is the elevation of an individual's core body temperature above a 'set-point' regulated by the body's thermoregulatory center in the hypothalamus. This increase in the body's 'set-point' temperature is often due to a physiological process brought about by infectious causes or non-infectious causes such as ...
- 2022/09/11
Jul 14, 2016 · Fever has its etymological basis in Latin, meaning simply ‘heat’, and pyrexia comes from the Greek ‘pyr’, meaning fire or fever. Some sources use the terms interchangeably, whereas others preserve ‘fever’ to mean a raised temperature caused by the action of thermoregulatory pyrogens on the hypothalamus; for instance, in sepsis and ...
- Edward James Walter, Sameer Hanna-Jumma, Mike Carraretto, Lui Forni
- 10.1186/s13054-016-1375-5
- 2016
- Crit Care. 2016; 20: 200.
Pyrexia is the medical term for fever, in which the human body temperature rises above the average normal (37 degrees Celsius or 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit). Pyrexia is one of the most common symptoms of numerous medical conditions. Read on to know the causes, symptoms, and treatment of pyrexia.
- Overview
- A temperature-sensitive signaling pathway
- The protein that alters temperature reactivity
Researchers claim that fevers are more than just a symptom of illness or infection. They found that elevated body temperature sets in motion a series of mechanisms that regulate our immune system.
When we are healthy, our body temperature tends to gravitate around 37°C (98.6°F).
But when faced with an infection or virus, body temperature often goes up, resulting in a fever.
When someone’s body temperature rises to about 38°C (100.4°F0, doctors classify it as a slight fever. Larger increases in body temperature to around 39.5°C (103.1°F) count as a high fever.
When a person has the flu, for instance, they may experience a mild and uncomfortable fever. This may drive many people to seek natural or over-the-counter remedies to treat it.
However, fevers are not always a bad sign. Mild fevers are a good indication that the immune system is doing its job. But fevers are not just a byproduct of the immune response.
A signaling pathway called Nuclear Factor kappa B (NF-κB) plays an important role in the body’s inflammation response in the context of infection or disease.
NF-κB are proteins that help to regulate gene expression and the production of certain immune cells.
These proteins respond to the presence of viral or bacterial molecules in the system, and that is when they start switching relevant genes related to the immune response on and off at cellular level.
Dysregulated NF-κB activity has been linked with the presence of autoimmune diseases, such as psoriasis, irritable bowel diseases, and rheumatoid arthritis.
The researchers note that NF-κB activity tends to slow down the lower the body temperature. But when the body temperature is elevated over 37°C (98.6°F), it tends to become more intense.
Why does this happen? The answer, they hypothesized, might be found by looking at a protein known as A20, encoded by the gene with the same name.
The researchers involved in the study wondered whether blocking the expression of the A20 gene would affect the way in which NF-κB functioned.
And, sure enough, they found that in the absence of the A20 protein, NF-κB activity no longer reacted to changes in body temperature, and its activity therefore no longer increased in case of a fever.
These findings might also be relevant to the normal fluctuations in temperature that our bodies undergo every day, and how these may affect our response to pathogens.
As Prof. Rand explains, our body clock regulates our internal temperature and determines mild fluctuations — of about 1.15°C at a time — during wakefulness and sleep.
So, he says, “[T]he lower body temperature during sleep might provide a fascinating explanation into how shift work, jet lag, or sleep disorders cause increased inflammatory disease.”
Although many genes whose expression is regulated by NF-κB were not temperature-sensitive, the researchers found that certain genes — which played a key role in the regulation of inflammation and which impacted cell communication — did, in fact, respond differently to different temperatures.
Feb 6, 2017 · The terms ‘pyrexia’, ‘fever’ and ‘hyperthermia’ are used interchangeably; most sources differentiate a raised temperature caused by the action of thermoregulatory pyrogens on the hypothalamus, from conditions that increase the body’s temperature above that set by the hypothalamus (ie, heat production in excess of heat loss). Fig. 1.
Nov 21, 2023 · Pyrexia, or fever, is the body's way of fighting bacteria and viruses ; Pyrexia is a rise in the core temperature of the body and is triggered by the hypothalamus
Oct 3, 2016 · Despite recent advances, it remains unclear whether pyrexia or the physiological response to pyrexia causes morbidity and mortality and whether management of pyrexia with pharmacological agents or physical cooling actually confers benefit.
