Fever can cause pyuria in children

Rapid, accurate diagnosis of urinary tract infection in childhood is important, and pyuria is often considered critical in diagnosis in addition to the presence of large numbers of bacteria. Clinically important pyuria has been defined as more than 10x106 leucocytes/l of urine. Only 1.5% of healthy schoolchildren exceed this.1 The view that pyuria might occur often in febrile children without a urinary tract infection, perhaps as a non-specific response to fever2 has recently been described as untenable.3 We investigated further our clinical impression that pyuria does indeed occur in febrile children without a urinary tract infection. We studied 157 children (73 girls), mean age 2.7 years (range …