PUO of long duration (high temperature)

[woodstock]

Hi all

I was wondering if anyone here had heard of this or experienced it or knew anything about it...

an acquaintance of mine in France (owner of a B&B where I've stayed a few times now - I've become friends with the family) is roughly 70 give or take and has had (as his wife puts it) a PUO of long duration. Pyrexia of Unknown Origin I believe it is. i.e. a prolonged fever of three months now - not sure how high, likely only a few degrees but that still is bad.

Any ideas of what may cause this? I am sure they are seeing doctors but given that they are British living in France, utterly no idea how thorough the medical care would be for them.

If anyone has any advice I may offer them, that would be great.

thanks

Beth

 

[woodstock]

ps. apparently he picked something up on a trip to Russia as this started immediately after their return. he's also been aggressively tested and so far, nothing has shown up.

 

[wsuffa]

check for polonium....

 

[AdamZ]

Elizabeth check w/ Dr. Bruce but it could be Anything and I mean ANYTHING from a parasite to lymphoma to a pesky hard to find infection to a bump on the head that screwed up his internal thermostat so to speak. Hope it turns out to be nuthin.

 

[One Short]

Elizabeth,
Adam hit it pretty good. We used to call it FUO--Fever of Unknown Origin. The French are just fancier in their speech, I guess. The cause could be almost anything. If you can find the reason, Great, then it becomes Fever due to...... If you can't find the reason and there is nothing else you can do to check for a reason it gets called Fever of Unknown Origin. Fever is a fairly nonspecific symptom and usually has some other associated symptoms that will point you in a direction to look for the cause. FUO/PUO used to be more common when we had less sophisticated testing but there are still some things that are hard to diagnose.

Barb

 

[woodstock]

thanks for the advice - I wonder if hard core antibiotics (just because) would help? I hope he shakes whatever it is.

 

[bbchien]

To paraphrase my response on the red board....it could be....
Infections
Neoplastic
Collagen-Vascular
Metabolic
Toxic


an intestinal parasite comes to mind given the meat supply in Russia....the French Internists will throw the book at it....we figure out about 60% of them.