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Age and gender differences of psychogenic fever: a review of the Japanese literature.

Oka T, Oka K

Psychosomatic Medicine Division, Department of Neurology, University of Occupational and Environmental Health, Japan Iseigaoka 1-1, Yahatanishi-ku, Kitakyushu, 807-8555, Japan. toka@med.uoeh-u.ac.jp.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Psychogenic fever is one of the most common psychosomatic diseases. Patients with psychogenic fever have acute or persistent body temperature above normal range in psychologically stressful situations. In spite of numerous case reports on psychogenic fever, there are few epidemiological studies. Therefore, our goal was to investigate the age distribution and gender differences of psychogenic fever in Japan. METHODS: To achieve this goal, we searched Medline and Ichushi WEB, a Japanese medical database, and added other publications that were not included in these databases. Thus, we reviewed 195 Japanese cases of psychogenic fever published in 62 papers. RESULTS: Psychogenic fever patients ranged from 3 to 56 years old, with the highest number of cases occurring in 13 year-olds in both sexes. The male: female ratio of 1: 1.19 suggested a slight predominance of female cases. Psychogenic fever accounted for 18% of fever cases of unknown origin in children and 2-6% of the psychosomatic diseases of pediatric patients. Patients with psychogenic fever were not only found in pediatrics departments, but also in psychosomatic medicine, psychiatry, internal medicine, anesthesiology, dentistry, and obstetrics/gynecology departments. CONCLUSION: The age of psychogenic fever patients ranged from 3 to 56 years old and the male: female ratio was 1:1.19. Psychogenic fever is seen especially in adolescence in Japan.

Published 7 June 2007 in Biopsychosoc Med, 1: 11.
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