The Fever Response after Treatment of Tuberculosis: What is the Expected Time and What are the Risk Factors?

Background: The symptoms of pulmonary Tuberculosis include anorexia, weight loss, cough, night sweeting and fever. Fever is a common symptom and an efficient tool that is utilized for checking the response to anti-TB treatment. Objectives: The main goals of this study are evaluating the time of fever stop and effective factors on fever response according to anti tuberculosis treatment. Materials and methods: This study is a cross sectional study on tuberculosis (TB) patients hospitalized in the infectious diseases department of Imam Khomeini Complex Hospital (Tehran, Iran), from 1997 to 2006. We study the information related to 205 patients using the available database. Results: The median of the patients’ age is 40 years ranging from 15 to 88 and the average age is 45 years with standard deviation of 19.8. The average duration of fever response is 11.7 days with standard deviation of 7.5. No significant correlation was found among various factors such as: age, gender, different anti-tuberculosis regime, extra pulmonary or pulmonary TB, underlying disease, receiving immunesuppressing drugs, anemia, hyponatremia, history of drug addiction, and fever response followed by anti-TB treatment. Conclusion: The time of fever stop is relatively long in our patients following antituberculosis treatment. Due to similar prognosis between rapid and slow response in different patients, fever response should not be considered as a strict criterion for response to treatment and time of discharge.

Author(s):

Zeynab Yassin, Zahra Ahmadinejad and Hamid Emadi Kouchak

Abstract | Full-Text | PDF

Share this