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what is disease in biology

by Prof. Verla Cassin III Published 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago
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In simple terms a disease can be defined as a disorder of structure or function of an organism that is not a direct result of physical injury. The manifestation of disease is a direct consequence of a disruption of function of a biological system at a molecular and cellular level.

Full Answer

What is a disease definition?

“A disease is a condition that deteriorates the normal functioning of the cells, tissues, and organs.” Diseases are often thought of as medical conditions that are characterized by their signs and symptoms. “Any dangerous divergence from a functional or normal state of an entity.”

What are the categories of diseases?

Types of Diseases. Diseases are chiefly classified into acute diseases and chronic diseases. Acute Diseases. Diseases that last for a few days and that can be cured through medications are called acute diseases. The following table shows some of the examples: Causes. Disease.

What is the difference between a disease and a disorder?

There is a wide gap of measures between a disease and a disorder. The main difference between a disease and a disorder is that a disease is most often than not caused by factors such as viruses and bacteria while a disorder is due to abnormalities mostly being intrinsic like birth defects and genetic malfunction.

What is the meaning of disease?

n. 1. An abnormal condition of a part, organ, or system of an organism resulting from various causes, such as infection, inflammation, environmental factors, or genetic defect, and characterized by an identifiable group of signs, symptoms, or both. 2. A condition or tendency, as of society, regarded as abnormal and harmful. 3.

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What is disease according to biology?

noun, plural: diseases. An abnormal condition of an organism which interrupts the normal bodily functions that often leads to feeling of pain and weakness, and usually associated with symptoms and signs.

What is disease Short answer?

A disease is a particular abnormal condition that negatively affects the structure or function of all or part of an organism, and that is not immediately due to any external injury. Diseases are often known to be medical conditions that are associated with specific signs and symptoms.

What is disease and its causes?

Infectious diseases are disorders caused by organisms — such as bacteria, viruses, fungi or parasites. Many organisms live in and on our bodies. They're normally harmless or even helpful. But under certain conditions, some organisms may cause disease. Some infectious diseases can be passed from person to person.

What is disease Class 9 biology?

What is Disease? “A disease is a condition that deteriorates the normal functioning of the cells, tissues, and organs.” Diseases are often thought of as medical conditions that are characterized by their signs and symptoms.

What is disease Class 8?

Answer: A disease is a condition of disturbances in physical and psychological processes of the human body.

What is disease Class 9 answer?

Health means a state of physical, mental and social well-being. Question2. Define disease. Answer: Disease means being uncomfortable.

What is health and disease?

A disease is a type of internal state which is either an impairment of normal functional ability, i.e., a reduction of one or more functional abilities below typical efficiency, or a limitation on functional ability caused by the environment. (4) Health is the absence of disease. (Boorse, 1997, pp.

What is disease process?

any impairment of normal physiological function affecting all or part of an organism, esp a specific pathological change caused by infection, stress, etc, producing characteristic symptoms; illness or sickness in general [...]

What is meant by communicable diseases? Name any two communicable diseases.

The diseases that can be spread easily from an infected individual to a healthy individual are known as communicable diseases. Common cold and vira...

What are genetic diseases?

A genetic disease or disorder is the result of changes, or mutations, in an individual’s DNA. A mutation is a change in the letters (DNA sequence)...

What are the disease-causing organisms known as?

The disease-causing organisms are referred to as pathogens. A pathogen or infectious agent is a biological agent that causes disease or illness to...

Name the disease caused by the deficiency of insulin hormone in the body.

Diabetes is caused by the deficiency of a hormone known as insulin.

What is the difference between an infectious disease and a communicable disease?

If an infectious disease can not be transferred from one person to another like cholera or diarrhoea, then the disease is termed non-communicable....

What is the term for an abnormal condition of an organism that interrupts the normal bodily functions?

Disease. An abnormal condition of an organism which interrupts the normal bodily functions that often leads to feeling of pain and weakness, and usually associated with symptom s and signs. A pathologic condition in which the normal functioning of an organism or body is impaired or disrupted resulting in extreme pain, dysfunction, distress, ...

What is pathologic condition?

A pathologic condition in which the normal functioning of an organism or body is impaired or disrupted resulting in extreme pain, dysfunction, distress, or death. Supplement. It may include state of injuries, disabilities, disorder s, syndrome s, infection s, isolated symptoms, deviant behaviors, or atypical variations of structure and function.

What is a disease?

Full Article. Disease, any harmful deviation from the normal structural or functional state of an organism, generally associated with certain signs and symptoms and differing in nature from physical injury. A diseased organism commonly exhibits signs or symptoms indicative of its abnormal state. Thus, the normal condition ...

What is the study of disease called?

The study of disease is called pathology. It involves the determination of the cause (etiology) of the disease, the understanding of the mechanisms of its development (pathogenesis), the structural changes associated with the disease process (morphological changes), and the functional consequences of those changes.

What are noncommunicable diseases?

The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified four major types of noncommunicable disease: cancer, cardiovascular disease (e.g., heart attack, stroke ), chronic respiratory disease (e.g., asthma ), and diabetes mellitus. WHO estimates that, combined, these four groups of conditions account for 82 percent of all deaths from noncommunicable disease.

What are some examples of inherited diseases?

Examples of inherited diseases that emerge in adulthood include Huntington disease and certain forms of cancer (e.g., familial breast cancer involving inherited mutations in either of the genes BRCA1 or BRCA2 ).

What causes death in humans?

Death in humans and other mammals, for example, often results directly from heart or lung failure, but the preceding sequence of events may be highly complex, involving disturbances of other organ systems and derangement of other control mechanisms.

Can humans be affected by diseases?

Humans, other animals, and plants are all susceptible to diseases of some sort. However, that which disrupts the normal functioning of one type of organism may have no effect on the other types.

Is a disease innate or innate?

The initial cause of the diseased state may lie within the individual organism itself, and the disease is then said to be idiopathic, innate, primary, or “essential.” It may result from a course of medical treatment, either as an unavoidable side effect or because the treatment itself was ill-advised; in either case the disease is classed as iatrogenic. Finally, the disease may be caused by some agent external to the organism, such as a chemical that is a toxic agent. In this case the disease is noncommunicable; that is, it affects only the individual organism exposed to it. The external agent may be itself a living organism capable of multiplying within the host and subsequently infecting other organisms; in this case the disease is said to be communicable.

What is a disease?

In simple terms a disease can be defined as a disorder of structure or function of an organism that is not a direct result of physical injury. The manifestation of disease is a direct consequence of a disruption of function of a biological system at a molecular and cellular level.

What is a disease? How does it occur?

Whether it is cancer, Ebola virus, or the issues surrounding vaccination, we hear the term “disease.” But, what is a disease and how does it occur? In simple terms a disease can be defined as a disorder of structure or function of an organism that is not a direct result of physical injury. The manifestation of disease is a direct consequence of a disruption of function of a biological system at a molecular and cellular level.

What can you do with a biology of disease concentration?

Graduates of the Biology of Disease concentration will be well situated to pursue a wide range of careers in health-related professions, biological and medical research, lab-based quality control and diagnostics, public and global health, science policy, law and intellectual property, business, education, and science writing.

Why is it important to know what a disease or disability is?

Why is it important to know what a disease or disability is? One reason is practical: because today's medicine has an unprecedented ability to actually do things, it matters a great deal what we decide to tackle. The ability to make powerful, effective interventions into people's health brings with it new ethical responsibilities. If we want to ensure that limited healthcare resources are appropriately distributed, for example, we must have a reasonably clear idea, first what a disease is, and second, which diseases are most worth the investment of time and money.

Why are new clinical diagnoses welcomed?

As the business literature shows, new clinical diagnoses are often welcomed primarily as opportunities for market growth

What causes disability after birth?

Most disability is caused by events that occur after birth: ageing, illness and trauma, including war, in which genetic factors may have little or no role.

Is disability a personal experience?

On top of this, the personal experience of disability is not always predictable, and it can be very different from the experience of disease. Most sociological models of acute and chronic disease see it as a disruption to an ongoing personal identity (Bury, 1982). In part this was confirmed by a study that I carried out together with Christoph Rehmannsutter and Christine Rippberger in Switzerland between 1998 and 2001, in which we compared the attitudes of potential providers and potential consumers of future somatic gene therapy (Scully et al, 2004). People with multiple sclerosis clearly identified their illness as a disruption, “something that has happened to me.” Many forms of disability are also experienced as disruptions, especially those that occur in the course of a person's life as a result of ageing, trauma or illness.

Is disability worse than disease?

If defining disease is difficult, disability is worse. There are problems even with deciding where to look. Does disability lie in the person? Or somewhere else? Where does the cut-off point between physical variation and disability lie? Is there in fact a cut-off point? Until recently the only coherent model for thinking about disability was a medical one, in which disability is seen as a nominative pathology: a disease, degeneration, defect or deficit located in an individual. Exactly what constitutes disease, degeneration, defect or deficit here is decided by reference to a biomedical norm. It is therefore helpful to have a biomedical norm available, which might explain why the idea of 'disability' as a category arose in parallel with medical standardization.

Is a carrier of a genetic predisposition ill or not?

As noted earlier, one ambiguity is whether the carrier of a genetic predisposition should be considered ill or not. In addition there is a real risk that the accumulation of gene loci associated with disease leads to the conflation of the marker and what it marks. Note that this criticism does not hinge on whether the allele concerned really does cause the phenotype. There is no doubt that genetic factors are involved in illnesses and disabilities, but exactly how they interact with environmental and social factors is likely to differ for every condition. Critics of genetic determinism properly deplore the tendency to ignore non-genetic influences. The point here is a slightly different one. Two jumps are being made: from gene to phenotype, and from phenotype to experience. Irrespective of how convoluted is the relationship between genotype and phenotype, the arguments given earlier suggest that the 'harm' of the impairment is not straightforwardly related to phenotype. What ought to concern us about disease and disability is the disadvantage, pain or suffering involved, and in a sense the impairment is always a kind of surrogate marker for this experience. By defining disease or disability in terms of genetic loci, the relationship to experience is made a step more distant: removed not just from the lived experience of the phenotype, but from the development of the phenotype itself. Of course the size of this separation depends on the condition, and in many cases makes no real difference: it would be both stupid and offensive to suggest the need to examine lived experience before deciding that having familial colon cancer entails suffering. Nevertheless, for a lot of conditions that at the moment are called disabilities, and bundled together with more easily definable diseases, the situation is not so simple.

Is health a context dependent disease?

Unfortunately, this is problematic as well. Notions of health are highly context- dependent, as human diseases only exist in relation to people, and people live in varied cultural contexts .

What is a disease?

disease. n. An abnormal condition of a part, organ, or system of an organism resulting from various causes, such as infection, inflammation, environmental factors, or genetic defect, and characterized by an identifiable group of signs, symptoms, or both.

What is the definition of Addison's disease?

disease. a definite pathological process having a characteristic set of signs and symptoms. It may affect the whole body or any of its parts, and its etiology, pathology, and prognosis may be known or unknown. For specific diseases, see under the specific name, as addison's disease.

What is coats disease?

Coats' disease Chronic, progressive retinal vascular anomalies, usually unilateral, occurring predominantly in young males. It is characterized by retinal exudates, irregular dilatation (telangiectasia) and tortuosity of retinal vessels and appears as a whitish fundus reflex (leukocoria). Subretinal haemorrhages are frequent and eventually retinal detachment may occur. The main symptom is a decrease in central or peripheral vision, although it may be asymptomatic in some patients. Management may involve photocoagulation or cryotherapy. A less severe form of the disease is called Leber's miliary aneurysms. Syn. retinal telangiectasia.

What is Batten Mayou disease?

Batten-Mayou disease Juvenile form of amaurotic family idiocy. It is characterized by progressive degeneration of the retina, which eventually leads to blindness. Syn. Spielmeyer-Stock disease.

What is von Hippel's disease?

von Hippel's disease A rare disease, sometimes familial, in which haemangiomata occur in the retina where they appear ophthalmoscopically as one or more round, elevated reddish nodules. The condition is progressive and takes years before there is a complete loss of vision. Syn. angiomatosis retinae.

What is Berlin's disease?

Berlin's disease A traumatic phenomenon in which the posterior pole of the retina develops oedema (and haemorrhages). Syn. commotio retinae.

What is the name of the disease that causes a loss of visual acuity?

Devic's disease A demyelinative disease of the optic nerve, the optic chiasma and the spinal cord characterized by a bilateral acute optic neuritis with a transverse inflammation of the spinal cord. Loss of visual acuity occurs very rapidly and is accompanied by ascending paralysis.

What is a Disease?

The diseases can be simply defined as a disturbance in the normal functioning of the body, among which few affects only to the particular organ system and some affect the entire body of an organism. There are numerous diseases which vary in their signs, symptoms, and causes. Pathology is the branch of medicines which mainly deals with the study of disease, the nature of diseases, its cure, diagnosis, etc.

What is a disease that spreads from one person to another called?

A disease, which spreads from one person to another person, is termed as the communicable disease . It is also referred to as infectious diseases or transmissible diseases. Also Read: Communicable Non Communicable Diseases .

What are some examples of communicable diseases?

Communicable diseases are an infectious disease, which spread from a person to person and are caused by the pathogens. Tuberculosis, typhoid, scabies, plague, skin allergies are are some examples of communicable diseases. Name few diseases caused by Protozoa. Amoebic dysentery, Malaria, Sleeping sickness, Redness of eye and Ulcers are list ...

How do bacteria harm the body?

These bacteria are called beneficial bacteria. The other group of bacteria, cause harm by entering into our body. These bacteria generally, engulf, reproduce kill the protective bacteria and cause harm to the host cells by releasing toxins. Tuberculosis, Whooping cough, Typhoid, Cholera, are a few examples of infections caused by bacteria.

What are some examples of fungi?

Fungi. They are threadlike parasites, which cannot synthesize their food and feeds on other organic material in which they live in. Ringworm, Athlete’s foot are a few examples of infections caused by fungi.

How many diseases are there in the world?

As per the medical records, there are more than 20,000 of human diseases, which affect more than millions of people every year.

What is the branch of medicine that deals with the study of disease, the nature of diseases, its cure, diagnosis,?

There are numerous diseases which vary in their signs, symptoms, and causes. Pathology is the branch of medicines which mainly deals with the study of disease, the nature of diseases, its cure, diagnosis, etc. Also Refer: Diseases. As per the medical records, there are more than 20,000 of human diseases, which affect more than millions ...

What is the biology of infectious diseases?

Introduction to the Biology of Infectious Diseases. A healthy person lives in harmony with the microbial flora that helps protect its host from invasion by pathogens, usually defined as microorganisms that have the capacity to cause disease.

What is the microbial flora?

The microbial flora is mostly bacteria and fungi and includes normal resident flora, which is present consistently and which promptly reestablishes itself if disturbed, and transient flora, which may colonize the host for hours to weeks but does not permanently establish itself.

What are tropisms in the body?

Tropisms (attractions to certain tissues) determine which body sites microorganisms colonize. Normal flora is influenced by tropisms and many other factors (eg, diet, hygiene, sanitary conditions, air pollution). For example, lactobacilli are common in the intestines of people with a high intake of dairy products; Haemophilus influenzae colonizes the tracheobronchial tree in patients with COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). As a result, different body habitats contain microbial communities, forming microbiomes that differ by microbial composition and function.

What is a healthy person living in harmony with the microbial flora that helps protect its host from?

Click here for Patient Education. A healthy person lives in harmony with the microbial flora that helps protect its host from invasion by pathogens, usually defined as microorganisms that have the capacity to cause disease.

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