[Fever : to treat or not to treat ?]

Fever is routinely faced during medical practice. Although it is part of the immune response against pathogens, it is often seen as deleterious and a source of discomfort leading to the use of antipyretic drugs. However, few clinical data support this common practice. On the contrary, to date, results tilt in favor of the beneficial effect of fever, such as a better immune response and inhibition of pathogen growth. Data encourage the treatment of fever only in certain conditions such as neurological symptoms, cardio-pulmonary failure, or fever of non-infectious origin. In fact recent evidence stress that systematic treatment of fever do not improve, but nor deteriorate, the disease outcome. This suggests to only treat the poorly tolerated fevers.