While common knowledge suggests the human body's base temperature is 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, adults' average normal body temperature could be closer to 97.7 degrees Fahrenheit,, according to a study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
Here are three things to know:
1. To conduct the study, Jonathan Hausmann, MD, a rheumatologist at Boston Children's Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, used crowdsourced data from an iPhone app called Feverprints to analyze 11,458 temperatures from 329 healthy adults, according to Wired.
2. Dr. Hausmann and his colleagues found the adults' average normal temperature was 97.7 degrees Fahrenheit, as measured by an oral thermometer. They discovered fever occurred, on average, at 99.5 degrees Fahrenheit. They also found body temperature was slightly higher in women than men and in children than adults. Temperature was lowest in the morning.
3. Dr. Hausmann suggests body temperature should be a "flexible concept," viewed in the context of a patient's weight, height, age, gender and time of day, among other factors. Dr. Hausmann plans to further explore this concept by pairing wearable thermometers to the Feverprints app to achieve continuous temperature readings and better data.
"A temperature of 99 at six o’clock in the morning is very abnormal, whereas that same temperature at four o’clock in the afternoon can be totally normal," Dr. Haussmann told Wired. "If we have enough people wearing those gadgets we could understand fever patterns of different illnesses."