How fever helps combat disease has now been better understood

AN ELEVATED body temperature can kill. Yet fever—which is precisely that—is a common response to infection. Clearly, extra heat has value in combating illness.Exactly how fever works its magic is ill-understood. But research just published in by Chen Jianfeng of the Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, in Shanghai, sheds light on the matter. Dr Chen’s work shows how febrile temperatures encourage a particular protein to shepherd immune-system cells to sites of infection.