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Increased sweating
Last reviewed: 07.07.2025
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During fever, sweat is hot and usually appears on hyperemic skin, whereas in conditions accompanied by hypersympathicotonia and arterial hypotension, sweat is cold, sticky, and the skin is pale.
Sometimes excessive sweating is accompanied by a special rash (prickly heat) in the form of vesicles the size of a poppy seed, covering the skin like dew. Prickly heat is caused by blockage of the excretory ducts of the sweat glands.
Excessive sweating can be caused by the following reasons.
- Constitutional features.
- Fever: with some diseases, increased sweating occurs only during periods of decreased body temperature (lobar pneumonia, sepsis, malaria). Tuberculosis and HIV infection are characterized by the symptom of profuse night sweats associated with prolonged subfebrile fever. This symptom is also observed with infective endocarditis. Conversely, increased sweating is not typical for scarlet fever and typhoid fever.
- Hyperthyroidism (increased levels of thyroid hormones in the blood).
- Hypoglycemia - excessive moisture of the skin is one of the differential signs of hypoglycemic coma from other comas in diabetes mellitus (with increased glucose levels in the blood).
- "Hot flashes" in women during menopause.
- Conditions accompanied by an increase in the tone of the sympathetic nervous system: mental agitation, pain, fear.
- Vascular collapse with arterial hypotension.
- Severe hypercapnia - with suffocation, severe dyspnea, in agonal states.
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