Canadian researchers from McMaster University conducted a study on the effect of fever medication.
The researchers concluded that lowering fever leads to a further spread of the infection and a greater number of deaths due to the violation of the natural viral suppression in the body.
Previously, scientists had revealed that fever is a natural response of the immune system, which helps to suppress the virus. Lowering a flu-caused fever leads to an increased rate of viral replication, more prolonged and severe course of the disease, as well as the increase in the transmissibility of the infection. People ill with flu often lower temperature with medications and go to crowded places, infecting travel companions, colleagues and neighbors.
The Professor of Mathematics David Iron with his team first built a mathematical model to evaluate the cumulative effect from taking antipyretics on the spread of a flu virus, as well as a new strain causing a pandemic.
It turned out that lowering body temperature with flu medicines leads to additional one percent of illnesses, and to about 700-1000 additional cases of death. If the same applies to a highly contagious new flu strain, the effect of taking antipyretic increases, leading to five percent of additional cases of illness and up to two thousand additional deaths.
