Does A Fever Combat Cancer Cells?

Feed A Fever, Starve A Cancer? -- Future Pundit

Have modern sterile environments and antibiotics boosted the rate of cancer? Do we need to work ourselves into a fevered pitch once or twice a year?

There is an inverse relationship between febrile infection and the risk of malignancies. Interferon gamma (IFN-γ) plays an important role in fever induction and its expression increases with incubation at fever-range temperatures. Therefore, the genetic polymorphism of IFN-γ may modify the association of febrile infection with breast cancer risk.

Why? An immune system turned up to kill off invading bacteria might also react more vigorously to attack aberrant cells in your body that have mutated only part of the way toward becoming cancerous. Cells that have mutated all the way into becoming cancerous often have mutations that cause them to excrete substances that suppress the immune system. So vaccines against well developed cancers have fared poorly. But if the immune system could be stimulated into attacking pre-cancerous cells at much earlier stages then in some cases cancer could be prevented.

Read more ....

My Comment: Does fever hold anti-cancer effects .... mainly influencing our immune system to eliminate per-cancerous cells. More research is clearly needed.