Fevers With Unknown Origin

[Guest ANCY]

The last couple of weeks I've been getting fevers mostly in the wee hours of the morning but occasionally during the day. I do not have any cold or flu symptoms. Although my dysautonomia symptoms are worse I do not have any new symptoms except for fever, chills and severe body aches.

Does anyone else get unexplained high fevers because of dysautonomia? Mine have been going up to 104° and making me feel awful.

Thank you for your reply.

[ks42]

I've been getting unexplained fevers since the beginning of my POTS, and have been told that fevers are not a symptom of dysautonomia. For me, all of my doctors - POTS specialist, PCP, infectious disease specialist, etc. feel the fevers are part of the underlying disease causing the POTS, which is probably a chronic infection.

Fevers, chills, and body aches - even if you don't have congestion, sore throat, cough, etc. - are classic symptoms of various viral and bacterial infections, including influenza. If you haven't had fevers all along with your dysautonomia, you might want to consider seeing your doctor, or at least calling and checking with him or her. A fever of 104 is really high.

[Guest ANCY]

Thank you ks42. I have had problems with pretty frequent infections since before dysautonomia. What makes your drs suspect an infectious cause? What testing did you have done? How high do your fevers go? (My whole symptomology started with a sinus infection.)

I have had cyclical problems with fevers that come and go away since onset of POTS, several times could not find a cause. The concerning thing is how high they are going right now...

I did go to the Dr and he ran cbc, cmp, esr, blood cultures, ua, and chest x ray, still waiting to hear back... he thinks it's something infectious but wants to wait on antibiotics till he knows what he would be treating, I have a history with CDiff so have to be very cautious.

[ks42]

My almost daily fevers can run around 100-101. If I have a flu, sinus infection, or cold, I'll get fevers that are much higher for short periods of time. Chronic fevers are typically either infection or autoimmune disease, so after thoroughly ruling out autoimmune disease, we suspect an infectious cause.

One of the biggest reasons they suspect infection is because my spouse also suffers from the same fevers, also got POTS shortly after I did, and we both have had a bronchitis-type coughs for two years (and we've ruled out asthma, allergies, and respiratory disorders). We were both extremely healthy prior to diagnosis, so the doctors are pretty convinced we both got infected with something! We are also looking for potential exposures, but it's believed that because of the fevers, infection is probably more likely the issue. So far, neither of us test positive for typical acute infection markers (like elevated WBC counts) but we've found reactivated Epstein Barr and a couple other viruses. I'm also borderline positive for Lyme, so we don't know how that plays into all this. We're doing a lot more infectious disease testing before we formulate a plan of attack.

[Guest ANCY]

Thanks for the info, sound like a rough road. I hope you both start feeling better soon.

I don't get fevers constantly although my temperature does bounce around a lot. My neurologist believes autoimmune is a factor for me, so maybe need to investigate that fruther. I have non specific abnormal autoimmune blood work so maybe there's something there, I also responded well to IVIG which he gave me for the purpose of treating the autoimmune part of things.