Cushing's disease
1
5.5
- noun
- /ˈkʌʃɪŋz dɪˈziːz/
- Specialized
:
enfermedad de Cushing
- Doctors diagnosed him with Cushing's disease after he started gaining weight rapidly.
Examples
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Many patients with Cushing's disease experience mood swings and fatigue.
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Although the benefits obtained after bilateral adrenalectomy in Cushing's disease are evident, these patients continue to have health problems whether they are operated on through an open or closed pathway.
Academic text (2007) -
Her obesity and high blood pressure were symptoms of Cushing's disease.
Synonyms
1
4.5
A condition caused by too much cortisol, a stress hormone, that causes weight gain, weak muscles and high blood pressure
A condition where the body makes too much of the hormone cortisol in small glands above the kidneys
Small glands above the kidneys make too many hormones, causing weight gain
Surface Forms
Morphology
Cushing's + disease
This is an eponymous medical term named after a person (Cushing) rather than a compositional description; a B1 learner who knows only the word 'disease' cannot infer the specific medical condition or its symptoms from the proper name 'Cushing's'. Because the first constituent has no readily accessible lexical meaning, the overall sense is not derivable from the parts and requires prior medical/lexical knowledge.
Etymology
Cushing's disease comes from an American doctor, Harvey Cushing, who in the early 1900s first described people who gained a lot of weight and had other symptoms because of a small growth in the brain. That's why Cushing's disease means the condition where a tiny brain growth makes the body produce 'too much hormone'.