Eli5: what’s the difference between a syndrome, a disease, and an infection?
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A syndrome is a collection of symptoms that occur together. If, for example, you noticed that people in a certain area often got a cough, warts on their knees, and purple hair at the same time, you might term that condition /u/delighteddreamer’s syndrome.
A disease, if you’re distinguishing it from a syndrome, is a harmful syndrome together with a cause for that syndrome. Some syndromes can have multiple causes that end up creating the same symptom set.
An infection is the harmful invasion of the body by living things that are not supposed to be inside the body, or that are not supposed to be in a particular part of the body, or that are not supposed to multiply as much as they have. Infections are a type of disease. Most infections are *transmissible* to some extent: they can be passed from one person to another. Infections are usually caused by bacteria or viruses, but can also be caused by fungi, animal parasites, or even individual proteins in rare cases. A zit is a minor bacterial infection, COVID is a severe viral infection, a yeast infection is a minor fungal infection, and tapeworms are a moderate parasitic infection.
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