How does the term 'syndrome' differ from 'disease'?

Gnomon

A disease is an illness which is caused by one thing, usually a virus or a bacterium. A syndrome is a collection of symptoms which may be caused by one thing, or may be unrelated. For example, AIDS was named a syndrome at the time when they had no idea what caused it. Sufferers had a number of different appearently unrelated symptoms, but if you had more than a certain number of these, you were said to have AIDS. There were other diseases that caused some of these symptoms as well, so it wasn't enough to have just one of the symptoms. Later they discovered the disease (HIV) which causes the syndrome (AIDS). Aug 03 06, 3:15 AM

zbeckabee

A disease is an abnormal condition of the body or mind that causes discomfort, dysfunction, or distress to the person afflicted or those in contact with the person. Sometimes the term is used broadly to include injuries, disabilities, syndromes, infections, symptoms, deviant behaviors, and atypical variations of structure and function, while in other contexts these may be considered distinguishable categories. 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. WIKI Aug 03 06, 7:40 AM

greyhound_girl

diseases are caused by bacteria or viruses and usually go away with antibiotics and/or time, example, influenza B&A(flu, B and A are levels of intensity). Syndromes Do not go away and is something a person is born with in most cases, Example, Down Syndrome (an extra chromosome delays the child's development-leading to mental retardaion) Aug 03 06, 8:54 AM

Arpeggionist

Yes, but there are afflictions described medically as syndromes which people are not born with, such as tennis elbow, writer's wrist and the like. Such afflictions are treatable not by medicine, but by simply cutting them off at the source. (To stop tennis elbow one would stop playing tennis and so fourth). Aug 03 06, 9:55 AM

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