Fever: thermodynamics applied to the leucocyte.
A fever, by raising the temperature of leucocytes, accelerates and so enhances their antimicrobial action against infections. This is in keeping with thermodynamic principles which apply to chemical and biochemical reactions. In keeping with the same thermodynamic principles, when the temperature of matter is raised, at certain critical temperatures its form and behaviour change dramatically and radically. Visible water, for example, boils at 100 degrees C into invisible steam. By analogy to such dramatic changes of behaviour it has been proposed as a hypothesis, that when the temperature of the leucocyte is raised in vitro to the extreme limit just before it dies, its behaviour will also change in a radical and dramatic manner to produce a totally new class of antimicrobial substances or antibiotics, called leucocyte derived antibiotics, LDA. The new LDA should have a wide spectrum of action against infecting micro-organisms including viruses that provoke a fever in the body. They should also have some anti-tumour effects in patients providing such leucocytes. Preliminary observations suggest that when the temperature of leucocytes is raised in vitro to the point of near cell death they can indeed produce new antimicrobial and antitumoral substances.
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Cancer Research Laboratory, University Centre Health Sciences, Yaounde, Cameroon.
D005334:Fever / Q000209:etiology* / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D007239:Infections / Q000503:physiopathology; D007962:Leukocytes / Q000502:physiology*; D008954:Models, Biological; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000503:physiopathology; D013816:Thermodynamics