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What mechanisms can create fever and severe headaches lasting for a week and NOT be accompanied by any indication of inflammation in blood tests?

What diagnostic tests would be used to make a diagnosis, apart from a CT of the head and lumbar puncture?

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  • Welcome to MedicalScience.SE! For a number of reasons outlined in this meta post, we can not, and will not, give personal medical advice. If you have a question regarding your personal health, you should see a doctor. For further information on how this site is supposed to work, what is on-topic or not, you can take the tour, visit the How to Ask page and Medical Sciences Meta. I have voted to close this question and this post explains question closure.
    – Narusan
    Commented Oct 28, 2018 at 8:07
  • In essence, although you provide a lot of information, you are still asking for a diagnosis (why could the patient have fevere). We had this debate before with similar posts and decided to close them.
    – Narusan
    Commented Oct 28, 2018 at 8:08
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    I edited the question to remove patient-specific information and make it a generalized question that fits site guidelines.
    – Carey Gregory
    Commented Oct 28, 2018 at 17:43
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    @Jan You can see what edits were made and what previous versions said by clicking the "edited ___ hours ago" link.
    – Carey Gregory
    Commented Oct 29, 2018 at 13:53
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    OK, the OP should still explain if fever and headache are only symptoms and if blood tests have shown no indicators of inflammation, such as a high WBC. The wording "fever and headache without inflammation symptoms" is unclear, because fever itself can be a symptom of inflammation. Also, which body part was checked by a CT scan?
    – Jan
    Commented Oct 29, 2018 at 14:13

1 Answer 1

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Examples of conditions with fever and severe headache in which inflammation is not involved or is not the main process:

  • Caffeine overdose (BMJ)
  • "Thyroid storm" - acute hyperthyropidism (PubMed)
  • Hyperparathyroidism, for example, due to adenoma of parathyroid glands (Annals.org)
  • Cancers and tumors, such as lymphoma, brain tumors, pituitary adenoma (Cancer.net)

Examples of inflammatory conditions with fever and severe headache:

  • Temporal arteritis (WebMD)
  • Systemic lupus erythematosus or SLE (WebMD)
  • Infectious mononucleosis (WebMD)

Apart from a CT and lumbar puncture, diagnostic tests can include blood tests for thyroxine and parathyroid hormone levels, blood and other tests for the mentioned cancers and blood tests for vasculitis (arteritis).

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