If the purpose of a fever is to help the body fight an infection why is paracetamol prescribed to bring it down?

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If the purpose of a fever is to help the body fight an infection why is paracetamol prescribed to bring it down?

In: Biology

5 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

As explained by the others, fever is not a concern apart from mild discomfort, UNLESS it reaches certain temperature, where it starts to get dangerous. Why? Because protein, enzymes, cells, start to break at some point.

Now, acetaminophen (paracetamol) works by inhibiting an enzyme called COX-3. In short, it causes mild analgesia, and lower inflammatory reactions especially in our Central Nervous System, which in turn, affects hypothalamus (part that controls our body temp), and lower our body temp.

Moreover, COX-3 inhibition also have mild sedative effect (still, some people are completely unaffected). This also helps you rest (sleep) when you’re sick.

The combination of mild sedative and mild analgesia ultimately helps you rest better and recover faster, and that’s why doctors often prescribe it for almost every person with fever that has no contraindication.

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However, the current recommendation is to not take anti-inflammatory drugs for COVID-19. Probably because it will also slightly reduces your immune system. If you can stay at home, maybe now it’s best to not take any unnecessary medicine and just observe your symptoms a and watch out for any danger signs.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Let me preface this by saying that I’m not a doctor etc.

It is prescribed because fever causes discomfort and people want to feel better, and they want to feel like their doctor is doing something, and doctors want their patients to feel better.

With colds and flu, usually the only harm from taking fever reducing drugs is that you might take a little while longer to recover, so on balance most doctors think those drugs are worthwhile.

But fever, although unpleasant, is rarely dangerous – and it helps the immune system work better.

COVID-19 is more dangerous than a cold or a flu, so I think people who have it or think they have it, should not take fever reducing drugs. I would want my immune system working at 100%.

P. S. In the USA, paracetamol is called acetaminophen or Tylenol. Another different and also popular fever reducing drug in the USA is Advil, also known as ibuprofen. Aspirin is another one.

Anonymous 0 Comments

A fever usually isn’t a concern until it hits 103°F (39.4°C) in an adult. At that point, it becomes more of a priority to bring down the fever because it may actually begin to harm the body. I’ve always been told not to medicate a fever until it reaches that point, but obligatory “not a doctor.”

Anonymous 0 Comments

i was trying to find a news story that answered this exact question that aired locally recently but im failing.

My understanding based on that story is that fever is something the body does to help fight. But it is more a side effect of the body fighting off the illness than the primary mechanism of the fighting. It also makes the person feel badly. So by reducing the fever you arnt greatly impacting the body’s ability to fight off the illness but it is more a trade off to make the person more comfortable while the body fights. It might add a bit of time to the fight, but you feel better for the duration of that fight.

Someone that actually knows what they are talking about can correct me.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The human body causes a fever as an attempt to kill off a virus – the virus cannot cope with high temperatures, so the fever has the effect of killing off the virus. The problem is that the human body doesn’t like high temperatures either, but because we are bigger we can soak up the damage a fever causes for longer than most virus will be able to – ideally killing the virus and returning to normal temperatures before any serious damage is caused.

The problem is that while fevers serve a medical purpose, they are very unpleasant, but do serve as a warning that something is wrong.
To inhibit the fever is much more pleasant for the person, but means the virus won’t be treated as quickly – with less serious problems this means it may take slightly longer to recover fully, but we will feel better throughout this process. In more serious cases we need to inhibit the fever to stop the body from hurting itself, but as this also prevents the fever from treating the virus, we then have to treat that separately with other forms of medicine.

Ultimately, our bodies cause us pain to signal something is wrong – so a sore head may be a sign you are too stressed, or too dehydrated which is causing your body problems, sore muscles signify you have damaged them and they need to recover and so on. So listen to your bodies and fix the underlying problems, rather than just hiding them behind pain killers.