ABSTRACT
Objective To study the correlation between time of fever onset in the course of patients'illness and etiologies of fever of unknown origin (FUO).Methods A total of 1 570 patients with FUO admitted from January 2013 to December 2014 were retrospectively analyzed, and clinical data ( sex, age, time of fever onset) of 348 patients meeting FUO diagnosis criteria with definite etiology diagnosis and time of fever onset were collected for multivariate logistic regression analysis after bias check.Results No statistically significant bias was found between 348 selected cases and 1 570 overall cases in gender (χ2 =0.029, P=0.903) and age (t=-1.040, P=0.299), and multivariate logistic regression analysis showed positive correlation between fever onset during 13: 00-18: 00 and infection (P=0.044, B=1.275), 18:00-24: 00 and connective tissue diseases ( P =0.029, B =0.838 ) , and showed negative correlation between age and miscellaneous (P =0.010, B =-0.042).Conclusions Characteristics of fever onset time may have significant value in preliminary diagnosis and guiding the correct direction of final definite diagnosis by means of targeted examinations or diagnostic treatments.It is worth to be further studied and discussed.