Study on the relationship between fever and diet.

The cause of fever and diet relationship, ancient times spread a proverb: "when cold, fever should be hungry (feed a cold, starve a fever)," many people do not understand why some people have a cold fever after do not want to eat, and some people have a good appetite, what is the reason? What does it have to do with this proverb? A new mouse experiment by Ruslan Medzhitov, an immunologist at Yale University, and his colleagues suggests that proverbs may really make sense, but it depends on what causes fever.
used bacteria or influenza viruses that cause food poisoning to infect mice.
all mice ate very little after became ill, but some of them were forced to eat food or pure glucose.
10 days, all the mice infected with the bacteria and fed on a continuous diet died, but more than half of the mice that ate less survived.
but for influenza virus infection, 75 percent survived and only 10 percent of mice fed less survived.
food has a protective effect on viral infections, but is bad for bacterial infections.
, we were surprised that forced feeding had a protective effect on mice infected with bacteria," said Medzhitov, a research team.
"out of curiosity, the team conducted more experiments and found that glucose is a dangerous food ingredient during bacterial infections, not protein or fat.
the study was published In the September 8 issue of Cell (click on the lower left corner to read the original article).
but note that the study was conducted in mice, not humans.
but a human experiment conducted in 2002 had the same result: eating activates an immune response against viral infections, while dieting stimulates an immune response against bacterial infections.
, an immunobiologist at Stanford University, said: "If we understand the infection, there are simpler ways to improve the effectiveness of treatment."
", more work is needed before the findings are generally presented, with only one mouse used in the current experiment and no experiments on various infections.
we can't say, 'Patients with bacterial infections don't eat,'" Schneider said.
's not the time.
there are always exceptions to everything.
" said Janelle Ayres, an immunobiologist at the Salk Institute, different nutrients have an impact on survival rates, but not by acting directly on pathogens, but by changing the mice's ability to organize themselves to resist the metabolic stress that comes with the disease.
the traditional perception of most scientists and the public is that if we get infected, we need to take antibiotics or antiviral drugs, and all we have to do is kill the pathogens.
findings suggest that we need to deal with metabolic stress, or that we can compromise our ability to fight infection.
summary: cold fever may be caused by bacteria or viruses, so "when cold should eat, fever should be hungry" this proverb, although there is some truth, but too simplistic.
Based on the type of infection to decide whether a patient should be allowed to eat, not only for small infections, but also for sepsis, a serious disease that can be caused by bacteria or one of the virus pathogens.
source: Source: Supplied