Agarwaltimes - Huge temperature difference cause of viral fevers, say doctors

PUNE: Hot days and cold nights with a huge gap in temperatures are keeping doctors busy. They say the number of patients visiting them with complaints of viral fever, cold and cough has doubled in the last few days.

The minimum temperature on Wednesday dropped to 10.8 degrees Celsius while the maximum temperature touched 34.2 degrees, a difference of a 23.4 degree celsius. Doctors say the huge difference is causing an increasing incidence of upper respiratory tract infections and cases of viral fever, cough and cold.

The maximum temperature on Tuesday was 35.1 degrees, which was 3.5 degrees above normal, while the minimum was 13.1 degrees. On Wednesday, the minimum temperature dropped further to 10.8 while the maximum temperature was 34.2 degrees celsius.

Another reason for increase in the number of patients, say doctors, could be the fear of swine flu. "Patients mistake such weather-induced infections as symptoms of swine flu,' said a doctor.

An India Meteorological Department (IMD) official told TOI that such differences in temperatures is a yearly trend which is a result of the basic climatology of Pune. "Pune is a dry area, where the night time temperature falls quickly. Conversely, the city heats up during the day because of its rocky surface. This causes a significant difference between day and night temperatures. This is not the case during other times in the year when there is a lot of moisture in the air which does not allow temperature to fall so quickly during the night," the official said.

General practitioner Hillary Rodrigues, who is also the past president of the Indian Medical Association (IMA), Pune, said, "The huge temperature difference makes one susceptible to viral infections. The temperature is usually low during early morning hours while it increases towards afternoon. This affects the immune system and results in infections as a person's body does not get a chance to acclimatize to the sudden fall and rise in temperature."

Rodrigues said that he has been seeing an increase in the number of cases of upper respiratory tract infection over the past few days including cases of recurrence. "Due to a rise in swine flu cases, many patients approach doctors fearing that their symptoms—which may be due to an infection caused by weather extremities—are those of swine flu," he said.

Family physician Prakash Mahajan has been getting 20-25 patients daily (as against 10 before) complaining of upper respiratory tract infections such as rhinitis, sore throat, cough, fever and body ache.

Abhijeet Joshi, a consulting physician, said that nocturnal dip in temperature is primarily causing an increase in the incidence of viral infections. He added that patients complaining of such infections have increased by around 30% over the past few days.

A health advisory issued by the met department on Wednesday said that during the last three days, weather of northwest India has been affected by active western disturbances. "Western Himalayan region, particularly Jammu, Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh are experiencing wide spread moderate rainfall or snowfall activity for the last three days. The western disturbances and their induced cyclonic circulations have caused reversal of wind pattern. This has led to the sharp rise in both— day and night temperatures over plains of west and northwest India and also central India," the advisory said.

Among other things, the advisory added that Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, north Rajasthan and West Uttar Pradesh are very likely to receive light thunderstorm activity during February 23-25, whereas weather would remain dry over Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Telangana. "Both day and night temperatures would continue to remain above normal by 2-4 degrees C over several states during the next week with slight dip in day temperatures mainly over Punjab and Haryana on February 24-25," it said.

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