The words “syndrome” and “disease” are often used interchangeably, but they have some important differences.
The classification, though, has no bearing on whether they’re real illnesses or how serious they are. It’s simply a matter of how well they’re understood.
This article examines the differences between a syndrome and a disease and provides examples of both.
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What Is a Syndrome?
The definition of a syndrome is pretty straightforward:
In typical medical usage, a syndrome often doesn’t have an understood cause, course, or underlying process. This generally means treatments are lacking and there’s no known cure.
When doctors designate something a syndrome, they’re essentially saying, “We recognize this cluster of symptoms but we don’t yet know what’s going on.”
That doesn’t mean the symptoms aren’t real or aren’t serious, it just means medical science hasn’t yet determined why they’re happening.
Common Syndromes
Examples of syndromes and their primary symptoms are:
Many conditions start out as syndromes and are then re-classified as a disease once more is known about them. If the name of the illness contains the word syndrome, it may or may not be changed.
What Is a Disease?
The definition of disease is a little more complicated than that of syndrome. You can find several, incuding:
The second definition especially doesn’t seem to do a good job of separating a disease from a syndrome. In common medical usage, though, a disease is generally considered to have:
Common Diseases
Examples of disease and their causes are:
When researchers re-classify a syndrome as a disease, sometimes the name is changed and sometimes it’s not. For example, AIDS is still in use even though the S stands for syndrome and it’s now considered a disease. When names are changed, it can take time for the new name to gain widespread use.
How an Organic Disease Differs From a Functional Disorder
Summary
A syndrome is a group of signs and symptoms that are known to go together but don’t have a clear cause, course, or treatment path.
A disease is a disorder that affects how your body functions and is more likely to have a known cause, a distinct course, and established treatments.
If you’re diagnosed with a syndrome, you may run into people who don’t think it’s serious or “real” because it’s not a disease. This isn’t the case. It really just means that medical science hasn’t figured it out yet.
Frequently Asked Questions
Medically speaking, a condition is anydisease, disorder, syndrome, or tissue abnormality. Some definitions of condition exclude mental disorders.
21 Sources
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