THE ADAPTIVE VALUE OF FEVER
Section snippets
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The ancient Greeks, including Hippocrates, believed that fever was a beneficial sign during infection.22, 94 Because of the strong beliefs in the wisdom of the ancients, the concept of fever being beneficial did not change for almost two millennia. For example, the noted English physician Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689), apparently influenced by the writing of Hippocrates, wrote that "Fever is Nature's engine which she brings into the field to remove her enemy."66 Fever therapy was used in
ADAPTIVE VALUE OF FEVER
Experiments that relate to investigations of the function of fever can be divided into four general categories: evolutionary, correlational, antipyretic, and hyperthermia and hypothermia studies. A fifth type of evidence can be used to support an adaptive role for fever—its highly regulated nature. In evolutionary studies, the phylogeny of fever is investigated. The argument is made that it is unlikely that the energetically expensive increase in body temperature associated with most infections
Enhancing Specific Components of Host Defense
There are numerous examples of increases in specific components of host defenses caused by subtle changes in temperature (Table 3).Because of space limitations, these are simply listed.
Protecting Against Pathogen-Induced Disturbances in Homeostasis
Recently, Kozak43 proposed an additional rationale for the protective effect of fever. He hypothesized that in addition to the effect of temperature on various host defense responses (see Table 3), fever also could be considered a homeostatic process in terms of maintenance of a constancy of cell membrane
CONCLUSION
The results of the studies of the survival value of fever in ectothermic vertebrates indicate that following an infection, a rise in body temperature results in a decrease in their mortality and morbidity. These data provide further support for the hypothesis that fever in endotherms is also beneficial, because it is unlikely that fever would be adaptive in insects, fishes, and reptiles and would have become maladaptive in birds and mammals.
Based on the data reviewed here, it can be concluded
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