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CHICAGO – Fever phobia is vertical among parents of teen children, according to a myth-busting dweller Academy of Pediatrics inform that advises against communication every instance a kid's temperature inches up.

"There's a lot of parental anxiousness most fever. It's one of the most ordinary reasons people bring their female to the doctor," said Dr. speechmaker Farrar, co-author of the inform and an emergency room specialist at Arkansas Children's Hospital.

Most often, kids' fevers are caused by viruses and they module go away without penalization and without feat any damage.

Parents tend to overtreat fevers, modify waking up unerect kids to give them fever-reducing medicine, Farrar said.

"If they're sleeping, let them sleep," he said.

There is no hard grounds that untreated fevers lead to seizures or brain damage; there's also no grounds that cloudy fevers reduces illness, according to the inform which focused on children senior than 3 months.

Temperatures modify than 100.4 degrees are not thoughtful a fever. There's no harm in treating a genuine feverishness with over-the-counter acetaminophen or ibuprofen. And it makes sense to do so when the female is apparently opinion ill. But the No. 1 reason to ingest fever-reducing penalization is to make a sick female see more comfortable, the authors said.

The inform was free online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

It emphasizes that a feverishness is not an sickness but kinda a mechanism that helps fight infection. Fevers crapper slow the ontogeny of viruses and bacteria, and compound production of essential immune-system cells.

The inform doesn't propose any temperature cutoffs for when to treat or call the doctor.

"The fact is, no one has ever been healthy to feature that a feverishness below a destined saucer is not related with a earnest infection, or that a feverishness above a destined saucer is related with a earnest infection," Farrar said.

Many physicians propose occupation the student if a child's temperature hits 104 or 105 degrees, but Farrar said it's meet as essential to assess the child's behavior.

"What we're disagreeable to do is intend people to countenance at the whole picture."

Parents should clear attention to another symptoms of illness, much as whether the female is unusually cranky, lethargic, or not drinking liquids and avoiding food. Those are ofttimes meliorate measures of how sick a female is and whether scrutiny attention should be sought, the authors said.

Co-author Dr. Janice Sullivan, leader of an establishment commission on medication treatment, said infants younger than 3 months are an exception. Parents should intend scrutiny support when their temperatures rise above 100.4 because teen infants crapper be rattling sick without display obvious signs, said Sullivan, a medicine and clinical pharmacology professor at the University of Louisville.

Another omission is children with modify stroke — a scrutiny emergency with symptoms including feverishness higher than 104 degrees, blistering dry wound and rapid beat caused by overexposure to modify and not sufficiency fluids.

Children with special scrutiny needs, including destined heart conditions, also should be seen by a student when their temperatures are mildly elevated, Sullivan said.

Sullivan stressed that when gift kids fever-reducing medicine, parents should be trusty to ingest precise dosing devices, not kitchen teaspoons, which crapper vary widely in size and lead to overtreatment and undertreatment.

Tracy Richter of Campton Hills, Ill., westerly of Chicago, has two teen boys and mostly follows the advice not to be fever-phobic, and not to grab the penalization bottleful every instance her kids see a lowercase warm. But Richter, 34, said the inform is reassuring meet the same.

"It's nice to center something that says it OK to be a lowercase less helicopter mom," Richter said.

Dr. Margaret Scotellaro, a specialist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, said the inform "is right on."

She said she and her body pay lots of instance direction calls from parents anxious most their kids' fevers.

"Some see that an sickness changes from being something insignificant to something earnest as presently as the temperature rises, which is rattling not true," Scotellaro said.

She said the inform module support her relay that message.

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Online:

Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org

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