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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Disease | 3/7 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disease | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T07:27:57.596378+00:00 | kb-cron |
Some health insurance policies also define a medical condition as any illness, injury, or disease except for psychiatric illnesses. As it is more value-neutral than terms like disease, the term medical condition is sometimes preferred by people with health issues that they do not consider deleterious. However, by emphasizing the medical nature of the condition, this term is sometimes rejected, such as by proponents of the autism rights movement. The term medical condition is also a synonym for medical state, in which case it describes an individual patient's current state from a medical standpoint. This usage appears in statements that describe a patient as being in critical condition, for example. Morbidity Morbidity (from Latin morbidus 'sick, unhealthy') is a diseased state, disability, or poor health due to any cause. The term may refer to the existence of any form of disease, or to the degree that the health condition affects the patient. Among severely ill patients, the level of morbidity is often measured by ICU scoring systems. Comorbidity, or co-existing disease, is the simultaneous presence of two or more medical conditions, such as schizophrenia and substance abuse. In epidemiology and actuarial science, the term morbidity (also morbidity rate or morbidity frequency) can refer to either the incidence rate, the prevalence of a disease or medical condition, or the percentage of people who experience a given condition within a given timeframe (e.g., 20% of people will get influenza in a year). This measure of sickness is contrasted with the mortality rate of a condition, which is the proportion of people dying during a given time interval. Morbidity rates are used in actuarial professions, such as health insurance, life insurance, and long-term care insurance, to determine the premiums charged to customers. Morbidity rates help insurers predict the likelihood that an insured will contract or develop any number of specified diseases. Pathosis or pathology Pathosis (plural pathoses) is synonymous with disease. The word pathology also has this sense, in which it is commonly used by physicians in the medical literature, although some editors prefer to reserve pathology to its other senses. Sometimes a slight connotative shade causes preference for pathology or pathosis implying "some [as yet poorly analyzed] pathophysiologic process" rather than disease implying "a specific disease entity as defined by diagnostic criteria being already met". This is hard to quantify denotatively, but it explains why cognitive synonymy is not invariable. Syndrome A syndrome is the association of several signs and symptoms, or other characteristics that often occur together, regardless of whether the cause is known. Some syndromes such as Down syndrome are known to have only one cause (an extra chromosome at birth). Others such as Parkinsonian syndrome are known to have multiple possible causes. Acute coronary syndrome, for example, is not a single disease itself but is rather the manifestation of any of several diseases including myocardial infarction secondary to coronary artery disease. In yet other syndromes, however, the cause is unknown. A familiar syndrome name often remains in use even after an underlying cause has been found or when there are a number of different possible primary causes. Examples of the first-mentioned type are that Turner syndrome and DiGeorge syndrome are still often called by the "syndrome" name despite that they can also be viewed as disease entities and not solely as sets of signs and symptoms. Predisease Predisease is a subclinical or prodromal vanguard of a disease. Prediabetes and prehypertension are common examples. The nosology or epistemology of predisease is contentious, though, because there is seldom a bright line differentiating a legitimate concern for subclinical or premonitory status and the conflict of interest–driven over-medicalization (e.g., by pharmaceutical manufacturers) or de-medicalization (e.g., by medical and disability insurers). Identifying legitimate predisease can result in useful preventive measures, such as motivating the person to get a healthy amount of physical exercise, but labeling a healthy person with an unfounded notion of predisease can result in overtreatment, such as taking drugs that only help people with severe disease or paying for treatments with a poor benefit–cost ratio. One review proposed three criteria for predisease: a high risk for progression to disease making one "far more likely to develop" it than others are- for example, a pre-cancer will almost certainly turn into cancer over time actionability for risk reduction – for example, removal of the precancerous tissue prevents it from turning into a potentially deadly cancer benefit that outweighs the harm of any interventions taken – removing the precancerous tissue prevents cancer, and thus prevents a potential death from cancer.