Diurnal temperature variation and the implications for diagnosis and infectious disease screening: a population-based study
Open accessAbstract
Objectives: Fevers have been used as a marker of disease for hundreds of years and are frequently used for disease screening. However, body temperature varies over the course of a day and across individual characteristics; such variation may limit the detection of febrile episodes complicating the diagnostic process. Our objective was to describe individual variation in diurnal temperature patterns during episodes of febrile activity using millions of recorded temperatures and evaluate the probability of recording a fever by sex and for different age groups. Methods: We use timestamped deidentified temperature readings from thermometers across the US to construct illness episodes where continuous periods of activity in a single user included a febrile reading. We model the mean temperature recorded and probability of registering a fever across the course of a day using sinusoidal regression models while accounting for user age and sex. We then estimate the probability of recording a fever by time of day for children, working-age adults, and older adults. Results: We find wide variation in body temperatures over the course of a day and across individual characteristics. The diurnal temperature pattern differed between men and women, and average temperatures declined for older age groups. The likelihood of detecting a fever varied widely by the time of day and by an individual’s age or sex. Conclusions: Time of day and demographics should be considered when using body temperatures for diagnostic or screening purposes. Our results demonstrate the importance of follow-up thermometry readings if infectious diseases are suspected.
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Commonly used features are supported by prior work to be relevant to the effects of DM.
“commonly used features supported by prior work to be relevant to the effects of DM31–33,35–38,45,49”
From Sleep and temperature data from wearable devices support noninvasive detection of diabetes mellitus in a large-scale, retrospective analysis (2026) · cites this paper as [36]
The Background describes a study of diurnal body-temperature variation and fever detection by age and sex. Searches for “DM,” “diabetes mellitus,” and features relevant to the effects of DM found no passage in our copy addressing the attributed claim. (LLM, conf=0.76)
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Viswanath, V. K., Navaneethan, S., Burks, J. H., Soltani, S., Kasl, P., Hartogensis, W., Dilchert, S., Hecht, F. M., Mason, A. E., Wang, E. J., et al. (2026) · Communications Medicine · doi:10.1038/s43856-026-01501-0
- Authors
- Miller, A. C., Koeneman, S. H., Suneja, M., Cavanaugh, J. E., & Polgreen, P. M.
- Affiliations
- University of Iowa (US)
- Corresponding author
- Miller, Aaron C.
- Venue
- Diagnosis
- Publisher
- Walter de Gruyter GmbH
- Published
- 2023-09-13
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 54-62
- ISSN
- 2194-8011 (ISSN-L)
- 2194-802X
- PMC
- PMC11005884
- OpenAlex
- W4386623597
- Cited by
- 4
- References
- 29
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 1
- FWCI
- 0.84
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Diagnosis (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (R01HS027375)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Critical Care and Intensive Care Medicine › Thermal Regulation in Medicine
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Epidemiology › Data-Driven Disease Surveillance
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging › Infrared Thermography in Medicine
- Keywords
- diurnal temperature range, body temperature, fever detection, febrile illness, infectious disease screening, time of day, sex differences, age differences, sinusoidal regression, illness episodes
- MeSH terms
- Aged, Body Temperature, Child, Communicable Diseases, Female, Fever, Humans, Male, Temperature, Thermometers
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