Night Sweats

General or Other | - Others | Night Sweats (Symptom)


Description

Night sweats involve excessive sweating during the night and are not due to excessive heat in the room or in bed. Sweats are hot flashes that can end up soaking the clothing or bedding. The perception of excessive heat and sweating at night is quite common. For this reason, it is important to distinguish the sweat due to the high ambient heat from the ones that have medical origin.

Causes

The main causes are: (i) the menopause, hot flashes that accompany menopause may occur overnight and cause excessive sweating. It is a very common cause of night sweats in women during menopause; (ii) idiopathic hyperhidrosis, it consists of an excessive production of sweat; (iii) infection, tuberculosis is an infection that most often had been associated with night sweats. However, bacterial infections such as endocarditis (inflammation of the heart valves), osteomyelitis (bone infection) and abscesses, can cause night sweats. It can also occur in HIV infection, (iv) cancer. Some types of cancer as early symptoms are night sweats excessively, especially lymphoma. However, people with undiagnosed cancer often have other symptoms such as fever and weight loss; (v) drugs, such as antidepressants are often a common cause of night sweats.

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