Glandular fever

Glandular fever is a type of viral infection that mostly affects young adults.

It’s also known as infectious mononucleosis, or ‘mono’.

Common symptoms include:

a high temperature (fever) a severely sore throat swollen glands in the neck fatigue (extreme tiredness)

While the symptoms of glandular fever can be very unpleasant, most of them should pass within 2 to 3 weeks. Fatigue, however, can occasionally last several months.

Read more about the symptoms of glandular fever.

Symptoms

Symptoms of glandular fever are thought to take around 1 to 2 months to develop after infection with the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV).


The most common symptoms of the condition are:

a high temperature (fever) a sore throat – this is usually more painful than any you may have had before swollen glands in your neck and possibly in other parts of your body, such as under your armpits fatigue (extreme tiredness)


Glandular fever can also cause:

a general sense of feeling unwell aching muscles chills sweats loss of appetite pain around or behind your eyes swollen tonsils and adenoids (small lumps of tissue at the back of the nose), which may affect your breathing the inside of your throat to become very red and ooze fluid small red or purple spots on the roof of your mouth a rash swelling or ‘puffiness’ around your eyes a tender or swollen tummy jaundice (yellowing of the skin and whites of the eyes)

Some of these symptoms may develop a few days before the main symptoms mentioned above.