title: Concepts of fever: recent advances and lingering dogma.
abstract: Fever has been a preoccupation of clinicians since medicine's beginning. One might therefore expect that basic concepts relating to this physiological response would be well delineated and that such concepts would be widely known. In fact, only in the past several decades has the febrile response been subjected to scientific scrutiny. As a result of recent scientific investigation, modern concepts have evolved from a perception of fever as nothing more than a rise in core temperature to one in which fever is recognized as a complex physiological response characterized by a cytokine-mediated rise in temperature, as well as by generation of acute-phase reactants and activation of a panoply of physiological, endocrinologic, and immunologic systems. The average clinician appears to have little more than a regrettably rudimentary knowledge of these modern concepts of fever. This symposium summary considers many such concepts that have immediate relevance to the practice of medicine.
authors.affiliation: Medical Care Center, Veterans Affairs Maryland Health Care Center, Department of Medicine and Preventive Medicine/Epidemiology, Baltimore, Maryland 21201, USA.
authors.forename: P A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Mackowiak
authors.forename: J G
authors.initials: JG
authors.lastname: Bartlett
authors.forename: E C
authors.initials: EC
authors.lastname: Borden
authors.forename: S E
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Goldblum
authors.forename: J D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Hasday
authors.forename: R S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Munford
authors.forename: S A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Nasraway
authors.forename: P D
authors.initials: PD
authors.lastname: Stolley
authors.forename: T E
authors.initials: TE
authors.lastname: Woodward
mesh_terms: D000209:Acute-Phase Proteins / Q000502:physiology; D001831:Body Temperature; D016207:Cytokines / Q000037:antagonists & inhibitors / Q000502:physiology; D005334:Fever / Q000209:etiology / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000628:therapy; D005544:Forecasting; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans
chemical_list: D000209:Acute-Phase Proteins; D016207:Cytokines