Is Fever A Friend?

Do you rush to the medicine cabinet when your child has a fever? "Nothing bad is going to happen if you don’t treat the fever," said Dr. Ari Brown, a pediatrician in Austin Texas, and author of Baby 411: Clear Answers and Smart Advice for Your Baby's First Year.

A fever indicates that your child is fighting off some kind of infection. It is not an illness in itself. In fact, a fever may do some good. A study in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology found that children who ran a fever during their first year were less likely to develop allergies later in childhood than children who did not have a fever.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, a fever can help your child's body fight off infection. Many illness-causing microbes do best at the body's normal temperature. A fever raises the temperature beyond what certain microbes need to reproduce. A fever also kicks your child's immune system into high gear, spurring the rapid production of bug-clobbering white blood cells.

As for the concern among parents that fevers can have harmful effects, these instances are very rare. The brain has an internal regulatory mechanism that prevents fevers caused by infections from getting higher than 105 or 106 degrees. Body temperatures must get above 108 degrees to cause damage. Temperatures this high are caused only by exceptional circumstances, such as central nervous system disorders or heatstroke.

Usually a fever has to be above 102 or 103 degrees before making a child uncomfortable and needing treatment, such as acetaminophen or ibuprofen. And treating a fever usually just brings the body temperature down 2 or 3 degrees, not all the way to normal.

When to Seek Help
When should a fever send you hightailing it to a doctor or emergency room?
• A rectal temperature of 10.4 degrees or greater in an infant less than six weeks old.
• A fever of more than five days duration.
• High fever accompanied by lethargy -- your child is limp and unresponsive, won't make eye contact, or generally just looks and acts really sick.
• High fever accompanied by any of the symptoms of meningitis: an unusual skin rash, severe headache, aversion to light, confusion, stiff or painful neck.
• Constant, inconsolable crying.