In medicine, the term syndrome is the association of several clinically recognizable features, signs, symptoms, phenomena or characteristics which often occur together, so that the presence of one feature alerts the physician to the presence of the others. In recent decades the term has been used outside of medicine to refer to a combination of phenomena seen in association.

The term syndrome derives from the Greek and means literally "run together," as the features do. The term syndrome is most often used when the reason that the features occur together (pathophysiology) has not yet been discovered. A familiar syndrome name often continues to be used even after an underlying cause has been found. Many syndromes are named after the physicians credited with first reporting the association; these are "eponymous" syndromes. Otherwise, disease features or presumed causes, as well as references to geography, history or poetry, can lend their names to syndromes.

AIDS, a case study

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A recent case study is Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), so named as most syndromal immune deficiencies are either inborn or secondary to hematological disease. AIDS was originally termed "Gay Related Immune Disease" (or GRID), a name which was revised as the disease turned out to also affect heterosexuals. Several years passed after the recognition of AIDS before HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) was first described, finally explaining the hitherto mysterious "syndrome".

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National Institutes of Health (NIH) News Releases

NHGRI Seeks DNA Sequencing Technologies Fit for Routine Laboratory and Medical Use
Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:45:00 -0400
The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), today awarded more than $20 million in grants to develop innovative sequencing technologies inexpensive and efficient enough to sequence a person's DNA as a routine part of biomedical research and health care.
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Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:00:00 -0400
The majority of deaths during the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 were not caused by the influenza virus acting alone, report researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health. Instead, most victims succumbed to bacterial pneumonia following influenza virus infection. The pneumonia was caused when bacteria that normally inhabit the nose and throat invaded the lungs along a pathway created when the virus destroyed the cells that line the bronchial tubes and lungs.
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Mon, 18 Aug 2008 14:25:00 -0400
The largest genetic analysis of its kind to date for bipolar disorder has implicated machinery involved in the balance of sodium and calcium in brain cells. Researchers supported in part by the National Institute of Mental Health, part of the National Institutes of Health, found an association between the disorder and variation in two genes that make components of channels that manage the flow of the elements into and out of cells, including neurons.

CNN.com - Health

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A nagging injury almost kept 41-year-old Dara Torres from competing in her fifth Olympics in Beijing, China. Instead she swam through the pain to capture three silver medals.

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