ABSTRACT
This chapter provides noninfectious causes of fever in patients. It discusses human immune deficiency virus (HIV) infections. Undiagnosed fever is frequent in patients with altered immune defenses. The fever may be linked with an opportunistic infection, a lymphoma or Kaposi sarcoma, or probably with the HIV-1 infection as it appears soon in the natural history of the infection, many months before full-blown Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). The diagnostic criteria for AIDS were reviewed in 1987. In the absence of laboratory evidence of HIV infection, some diseases or treatments which are a cause of cellular immune depression exclude the diagnosis of AIDS. The chapter shows that in adults as well as in children a prolonged fever is a major sign of HIV infection. Fever can follow a surgical procedure or a blood product transfusion. Fever can reveal a secondary cancer complicating the immunosuppressive therapy of the first one or of a transplanted organ.
