every once in a while i try to look into why we have fevers and only find non-answers like "the immune system works better at higher temperatures"
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temperature is an odd knob to turn since it affects literally every biological process in both the host and pathogen
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Doesn’t that make it a natural knob turn? If selection pressure can’t find a precision knob it will turn a coarse one. If it kills the germs before it kills you, you win.
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generally speaking i would expect increased temperature to help the pathogens, until it doesn't. if it's the case that for most host/pathogen pairs the pathogen grows worse at fever temp than body temp (~2 C difference), that's suprising
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Replying to @Meaningness
this is definitely true for specific pathogens but it is not true in general for bacteria, and is presumably the opposite of true for viruses- since they depend on the host for replication they should (ceteris paribus) replicate faster at higher T
journals.asm.org/doi/epdf/10.11
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