Drug fever: a narrative review

Abstract

Drug fever is an adverse drug reaction accompanied by a febrile response and is a common problem among clinicians, hence an updated knowledge of drug fever is important. A consensus regarding the definition of drug fever is lacking. Thus, descriptions of drug fever in previous literature are often inconsistent. In this narrative review, we summarized various features of drug fever, including its definition, epidemiology, risk factors, clinical presentation, diagnosis, treatment and prognosis, based on the earliest literature. Recent advances in information technology have encouraged researchers to use pharmacovigilance databases for clinical and pharmacological research. We outlined how a pharma-covigilance database, along with recently developed research methods, could be used to research drug fever.