Werdnig-Hoffman disease

9.9

A rare disease passed from parents that damages nerve cells, causing weak muscles and early death in babies

noun
/ˈwɜrdnɪɡ ˈhɔfəmən dɪˈziːz/

Specialized

: enfermedad de Werdnig-Hoffman

The child was diagnosed with Werdnig-Hoffman disease shortly after birth.

Examples

Medical advances have improved the quality of life for patients with Werdnig-Hoffman disease.
A family history of Werdnig-Hoffman disease can increase the risk of recurrence.
Children diagnosed with Werdnig-Hoffman disease often face severe challenges.
Is Werdnig-Hoffman disease considered a type of spinal muscular atrophy?
The child was diagnosed with Werdnig-Hoffman disease shortly after birth.
Medical advances have improved the quality of life for patients with Werdnig-Hoffman disease.
A family history of Werdnig-Hoffman disease can increase the risk of recurrence.

Synonyms

SMA

vsWerdnig-Hoffman disease

Specialized

3 8.0

A genetic disease you are born with that makes your muscles weak and smaller

is a specific, severe inherited form causing early nerve degeneration and flaccid paralysis

Surface Forms

Werdnig-Hoffman disease singular

Werdnig-Hoffman diseases plural

Morphology

Werdnig-Hoffman + disease

The expression is an eponymic name (Werdnig-Hoffman) plus the generic noun 'disease'; a B1 learner who knows 'disease' will understand it denotes an illness but cannot derive the specific condition, symptoms, or severity from the name. Eponymic medical terms are not compositionally meaningful across languages and offer no semantic clues about spinal muscular atrophy, so the overall meaning is not predictable from the parts.

Etymology

Werdnig-Hoffman disease is named after two doctors, Werdnig and Hoffman, who first described babies with very weak, floppy muscles. They saw that nerves in the spine were damaged, so the name came to mean the severe 'spinal muscular atrophy' that often begins in early childhood.