can you describe disease in terms of causation? can you describe disease in terms of epidemiology?

Answer 1

Sure- either way. Let me give you a practical example:

In February a 6 month old baby goes to the doctor after 3 days of runny nose and coughing and 2 days of fever. Doc hears wheezes in the child's chest. Docotr may or may not do a test on the baby's nasal secretions. He can write one of two things for his diagnosis: bronchiolitis, or RSV infection.

Bronchiolitis is the description of the baby's condition on EPIDEMIOLOGICAL grounds: a baby of a particular age, in wintertime, with this classic set of symptoms has, by epidemiological knowledge, a very high risk of bronchiolitis. But since bronchiolitis may be caused by three different viruses, unless the doc did the test on the mucus to find out, he would not know whether this disease was CAUSED BY RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) or not- if he did the test and it was positive, he or she would write that as the diagnosis.

Same disease, same patient, could be diagnosed either on epidemiological grounds or on causative grounds.

If you want to know the fancy term for this distinction in studying diseases, we call it "nosology".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosology

Answer 2

Most diseases r named after the cause. Hepatitis,colitis,cystitis are inflammation of liver bowel and bladder respectively.Others r named after epidemiology. African trypanasomiasis occurs in Africa,Rocky mountain spotted fever was first diagnosed in rocky mountains,Colorado tick fever is caused by ticks in Colorado,and. Indian childhood cirrhosis occurs only in Indian children.Some diseases r described after a patient in whom it`s first diagnosed egg Christmas disease was first diagnosed in a man named Christmas.(It`s a bleeding disorder)

Answer 3

are you looking for information about a specific disease? please give more detail, because if you are asking just about causation as it relates to epidemiology, that is way to large a topic to answer succinctly on this forum

Answer 4

-Disease: Illness or sickness often characterized by typical patient problems (symptoms) and physical findings (signs) caused by specific etiological agents such as
1-microbes (bacteria ,viruses,fungi,protozoa,...)
2-congenital abnormalities including organ abnormalities and enzyme deficiencies...
3-autoimmunity :by considering self antigens as foreign antigens ,for ex:multiple sclerosis,rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes...