Mild fever may help clear infections faster than medicines
It may be better to let a mild fever run its course rather than reaching for medicines, suggests a new animal study which found that slight temperature could help clear infections faster.
The study, published in the journal Immunology and Inflammation, shows that a mild fever helped fish clear their bodies of infection rapidly, controlled inflammation and repaired tissue damage.
“We let nature do what nature does, and in this case, it was very much a positive thing,” said immunologist Daniel Barreda, lead author of the study, from the University of Alberta in Canada.
“Moderate fever is self-resolving, meaning that the body can both induce it and shut it down naturally without medication,” Barreda explained.
The study helps shed light on the mechanisms that contribute to the benefits of moderate fever, which “has been evolutionarily conserved across the animal kingdom for 550 million years,” the researcher noted.
The research showed that natural fever offers “an integrative response that not only activates defences against infection, but also helps control it,” Barreda said.