Febrile responses in patients with pediatric rheumatic diseases

Abstract

Fever is one of the critical symptoms of patients in pediatrics field. It indicates inflammatory focus somewhere in the body, and the major causes of fever are infectious diseases. Recent progresses of our knowledge about autoinflammatory syndrome promoted the investigation of the mechanism of fever, and suggested that the proinflammatory cytokines are the direct causative agents of fever. The basic science revealed that cooperation of IL-6 and IL-1β induces febrile response. Fever of unknown origin (FUO) remains a challenging problem. Rheumatic diseases, rare infectious diseases, and benign tumors and malignancies are diagnoses to be differentiated. FDG-PET is recently proved a valuable tool for the identification of the etiology in patients with FUO. Since the introduction of biological response modifiers into the treatment of patients with pediatric rheumatic diseases has shifted the therapeutic paradigm, a new concept that the blockade of a unique proinflammatory cytokine brings cessation of whole inflammatory responses affected tremendously the clinical medicine. A more investigation of inflammation and its pathophisiology will be needed in pediatric rheumatology. © 2012, The Japan Society for Clinical Immunology. All rights reserved.