Syndrome
In
medicine, the term
syndrome is the association of several clinically recognizable features,
signs,
symptoms, phenomena or characteristics which often occur together, so that the presence of one feature alerts the
physician to the presence of the others. In recent decades the term has been used outside of medicine to refer to a combination of phenomena seen in association.
The term
syndrome derives from the Greek and means literally "run together," as the features do. The term
syndrome is most often used when the reason that the features occur together (
pathophysiology) has not yet been discovered. A familiar syndrome name often continues to be used even after an underlying cause has been found. Many syndromes are named after the physicians credited with first reporting the association; these are "
eponymous" syndromes. Otherwise, disease features or presumed causes, as well as references to
geography,
history or
poetry, can lend their names to syndromes.
A recent
case study is
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), so named as most syndromal immune deficiencies are either inborn or secondary to
hematological disease. AIDS was originally termed "Gay Related Immune Disease" (or GRID), a name which was revised as the disease turned out to also affect heterosexuals. Several years passed after the recognition of AIDS before
HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) was first described, finally explaining the hitherto mysterious "syndrome".
SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) is an even more recent example of a syndrome that was later explained with the identification of a causative
coronavirus.
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Whonamedit.com - a repository of medical eponyms
