Viral fever symptoms

Having a body temperature of about 98.6°F that is 37°C is normal, and anything that goes higher than 100.4°F is considered a fever. When you have a cold or flu, your body temperature increases rapidly due to the viral infection.

Moreover, people nowadays have mostly resorted to taking self-medication instead of reaching out to an experienced doctor, which increases the chance of having multiple health complications when they suffer from viral fever.

Viral fever may present in any person having the following symptoms:

Severe joint and muscle aches
Headache
Sore throat
Fatigue
Runny nose
An increase in your body temperature
Chills
Dehydration
Eyes redness
Skin rashes
And the appetite loss

Even though these symptoms of viral fever disappear in about 3 to 5 days, people should always seek a doctor's advice if the symptoms persist.

Viral fever symptoms in adults

Fever is actually your body’s immune response to disease-causing pathogens like viruses and bacteria. It is when your body's immune system detects the entrance of such foreign bodies into your body, it triggers an automatic immune response that increases the temperature of your body.

In order to identify the symptoms of viral fever in adults, we can check the temperature of your body through a thermometer orally or through the rectum and tympanic membrane.

If the temperature in your rectum, underarm, ear or even oral is higher than 38.0°C, it indicates that the adult is having viral fever.

Other common symptoms of viral fever in adults are

Frequent chills
Muscle weakness
Sneezing
Bitter taste
No hunger at all.

Types of viral fever

Based on the area the viral fever affects, viral fever can be classified into the following types:

Respiratory viral fever

When your respiratory tract is affected by the virus, usually its lower or upper part, it is known as a respiratory viral fever disease. Some common types of respiratory viral infections are:

Common cold
Flu
Coryza
Laryngitis
Bronchitis

The SARS-Covid 19 infection caused by the novel coronavirus, is the viral infection that is currently ravaging the whole world, and also falls under the same category.

Viral enteritis

This kind of viral infection mainly affects your digestive tract with severity. Gastrointestinal viral fever which is also known as Stomach Flu often generally leads to a health condition which is called Gastroenteritis.

Exanthematous viral fever

When viral infections affect your skin in addition to causing a high fever, such infections are known as exanthematous viral infections. Some common types of exanthematous infections are:

Chickenpox
Measles
Rubella and
Roseola

Hemorrhagic viral fever

Some of the known viruses can cause life-threatening situations through the symptoms of bleeding manifestations, and a family of viruses that falls under this is called a hemorrhagic virus. They usually increase your body temperature to a much higher level.

Neurologic viral fever

A virus that is known to infect the Central nervous system specifically is called a neurotropic virus and such viruses are able to cause severe neurological infections.

Viral fever duration

Viral fever is usually quite acute and more commonly spread during the change of seasons like the Monsoon season. The duration of viral fever for most viral infections usually lasts up to 3 to 5 days. However, in a few of the viral infection cases, the viral fever seems to last up to 14 days and more.

Viral fever is generally not considered to be a disease or any common illness but is found to be a result of an underlying viral infection occurring in your body. It is also commonly found in kids and people who are having weak immunity. This viral fever results from the fight your body's immune system has with the foreign viral antigens and indicates the viral infection. At times, such types of viral fever can go undiagnosed which in turn develops into some severe complications.

What causes viral fever?

Your body’s immune system responds with a high temperature or fever when it fights off foreign pathogens. The body’s immune system naturally gets triggered to fight back when encountered with certain harmful pathogens like bacteria and viruses that somehow make their way into your body.

The body’s temperature rises to a high level when this exact behavior takes place. Viruses are usually transmitted by:

Air Droplets Inhalation

The air droplets coming out from an infected person through talking, coughing, or sneezing standing near you, without covering their face with anything. When such droplets are inhaled, they can result in an infection.

Food indigestion

You are quite likely to contract an infection if you consume any contaminated food items without knowing it. Viruses infect your food items, so you might get easily infected by such contaminations when you consume the infected foods.

Mosquito Bites

Monsoon is the high time when the mosquitoes breed majorly and rapidly in stagnant water, resulting in an outbreak of a common and severely known disease like dengue and malaria. It is also very possible to get infected with viral fevers from mosquito bites.

Body Fluids Exchange

Infections such as hepatitis B, HIV, and viral infection can be acquired from contaminated blood transfusions that are being pricked by an infected needle. They can also be transmitted sexually.

Viral fever treatments

The preliminary step that must be focussed initially in treating a viral fever is to go for reducing the symptoms of fever. In most cases, you may not feel like going for any treatment for viral fever as your body's immune system fights well against such foreign pathogens like viruses and recovers on its own sometimes.

However, if the condition of the virally infected person does not normalize within 4 to 5 days, the person needs to be treated for viral fever under some doctor's supervision.

How to control viral fever?

By following some medically advised steps in order to treat the symptoms of viral fever you can cool down its effect majorly.

If you are suffering from a viral fever, take the prescribed medications from an experienced doctor on time to reduce its symptoms effectively.
Take regularly the antiviral medicine prescribed for your condition, which you must take as directed by the doctor.
Give sufficient rest to your body.
Keep your body hydrated by consuming a good amount of water.
Consume lighter and easily digestible meals.

Viral fever vs bacterial fever

Bacteria are quite tiny microorganisms that are generally made up of single cells. They are very diverse in nature and can have several types of shapes and other structural features.

Bacteria are able to live in every conceivable environment, like in or on the body of humans.

Only a handful of bacteria are able to cause bacterial fever in humans which can be treated by taking antibiotics. Such bacteria are called pathogenic bacteria.

While if we talk about viral infection it is caused by viruses which are other types of microorganisms that are also tiny although they are even much smaller than bacteria. Like bacteria, they are also very diverse in nature and have a variety of features and shapes.

Viruses are actually parasitic. That means they require any kind of living cells or the tissue in which it can grow and cause viral fever while antibiotics can't cure viral fever.

Takeaway

Viral fever is a fever that results from a viral infection, like flu or dengue fever. While most viral fevers resolve within a day or two on their own, some are more severe and need medical treatment. If your temperature is 103°F (39°C) or higher, it’s time to connect to a doctor. Otherwise, try to take proper rest and stay hydrated.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Is Dolo 650 good for viral fever?

Most times taking a paracetamol tablet like Dolo 650 helps in reducing your body temperature that rises due to viral fever.

2. Can we cure viral fever at home?

By taking certain home remedies we can cure the viral infection at the site of our home like drinking sufficient water, and taking herbal formula but if the symptoms worsen make sure to consult the doctor as soon as possible.

3. Are bacterial fevers higher than viral?

Although the degree of any kind of fever cannot be differentiated on the basis of viral and bacterial diseases, high fever is generally linked with a greater incidence of severe bacterial diseases such as meningitis or pneumonia.

References

Is it a Bacterial Infection or Virus?