Question

AIDS is not a disease it is a syndrome why?

Answer 1

AIDS is an acronym that stands for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. AIDS is caused by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus or HIV. A person can be infected with HIV but not have AIDS. AIDS is designated as a syndrome since a group of health problems are characteristic of the disease. AIDS causes individuals to become susceptible to bacterial, viral, fungal, and parasitic infections. Individuals also exhibit increased rates of cancers like lymphomas. Technically, a syndrome can be defined as a group of symptoms that are characteristic of a disorder or disease (but it may be due to multiple diseases or no disease, e.g. an accident). A disease however is more crisply defined as a disorder of a specific organ or body system that arises from heredity, infection, environmental causes, etc. Sometimes these terms become blurred and are used interchangeably.

Answer 2

Answer:

Syndrome is defined as any disease, disorder or improper function characterised by more than one symptom. AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) is caused by HIV virus (Human Immuno Deficiency Virus). This virus damages the immune system of the body. Due to this the body can no longer fight off many minor infections. Instead, every small cold can become pneumonia or minor gut infection can become severe diarrhoea with blood loss. The effect of the disease, thus, becomes very severe and complex and may even kill the person suffering from AIDS. Hence, there is no specific disease symptom for AIDS but it results in complex diseases and symptoms. Therefore, it is known as a syndrome