Eli5: what’s the difference between a syndrome, a disease, and an infection?
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An infection is an invasion by a foreign creature (pathogen), most often bacteria or virus, but it can be fungal or parasitic.
A disease is a dysfunction of a structure or system in the body. It may be caused by your own body (autoimmune) or it may be due to an infection: for example Meningitis is a disease that affects the lining of the spinal cord and brain and can be caused by an infection of bacteria, viruses or fungi.
A syndrome is a group of symptoms, but sometimes you don’t know what’s causing it. For example, with AIDS, it was Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome because they had no idea why the immune system was dying. They later learned it was an infection with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, but kept the name.
Sometimes a syndrome is group of symptoms that may be present in multiple diseases, for example Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) is a complication that may come from a crush injury, COVID, pneumonia, Hantavirus infection etc….many diseases, same symptoms.
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