New research by a multidisciplinary team of mathematicians and biologists from the Universities of Warwick and Manchester has discovered the importance of hot body temperature. The hotter the temperature, the more the body speed up a key defence system that fights against tumours, wounds and infections.

Rises in temperature speed up the speed of a cellular ‘clock’ that controls the response to infections, at a body temperature of 34 degrees, the NF-κB clock slows down. At higher temperatures than the normal 37 degree body temperature (such as in fever, 40 degrees), the NF-κB clock speeds up.

Mathematicians at the University of Warwick’s Systems Biology Centre calculated how temperature increases make the cycle speed up. They predicted that a protein called A20—which is essential to avoid inflammatory disease might be critically involved in this process. The researchers then removed A20 from cells and found that the NF-kB clock lost its sensitivity to increases in temperature.

In normal life the 24 hour body clock controls small (1.5 degree) changes in body temperature, the lower body temperature during sleep might provide a fascinating explanation into how shift work, jet lag or sleep disorders cause increased inflammatory disease. Temperature changes inflammation in cells and tissues in a biologically organised way and suggests that new drugs might precisely change the inflammatory response by targeting the A20 protein.
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