What’s the difference between a condition, disorder, disease and syndrome?
In: Biology
**Condition**
A health problem, usually with a known name. Someone knows that name, but they haven’t told you yet. It’s sometimes used in the media when someone doesn’t want to reveal the name of their disease
“They said they have some sort of heart condition that causes them to pass out. Oh, I just spoke to their doctor. They have hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.”
**Disorder**
A health problem. When diseases are named as such, they often have no clear physical cause. It’s usually almost exclusive in psychiatry, sometimes to denote a class of health problems, sometimes to a specific kind. It can sometimes be used interchangeably with condition
“Eating disorder” = class
“Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder” = specific kind
“Sleep disordered breathing”
**Disease**
A health problem with a known physical cause.
“Coronary artery disease” = plaque in arteries
“Addison disease” = adrenal glands not working
**Syndrome**
A collection of signs and symptoms that often are caused by multiple diseases, or no known disease. These are often described from a time in medicine in which the understanding of disease was not great. Confusingly, the names have stuck even when the cause is ultimately identified
“Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome” (AIDS) = a bunch of people dying with no immune system, named because no one knew it was caused by HIV at the time
“Down Syndrome” = collection of features seen in children described by someone named Down, but it’s now known to be caused by too many chromosomes
“Chronic fatigue syndrome,” which has now been renamed to “Myalgic encephalomyelitis” because there really has been a movement away from calling things syndromes and towards giving them specific disease names
“Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)” = babies suddenly dying. No one knows why, and it’s likely caused by a few different health problems not yet fully identified
Latest Answers