Addison's disease
1
6.0
- noun
- /ˈædɪsənz dɪˈziːz/
- Specialized
:
enfermedad de Addison
- The doctor explained that Addison's disease results in low blood pressure and fatigue due to insufficient hormone production.
Examples
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Living with Addison's disease can be challenging, as patients often experience extreme weakness and skin darkening.
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After being diagnosed with Addison's disease, she had to make significant lifestyle changes to manage her symptoms.
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But in Kennedy's case, the risks were far worse than for an ordinary person because he already took high doses of steroids for the legitimate treatment of his Addison's disease.
Academic text (2014) -
Eugene Cohen, Kennedy's longtime endocrinologist who helped with the treatment of his Addison's disease, warned that she was "a potential threat to your wellbeing."
Academic text (2014) -
Much more seriously, he suffered from Addison's disease, a sometimes hereditary autoimmune illness of the adrenal glands that causes several potentially lethal consequences and makes its victims particularly susceptible to infection.
Academic text (2014)
Synonyms
A disease when small glands above the kidneys make too few hormones, causing tiredness and dark skin
A disease where glands above the kidneys make too little hormone, causing tiredness, weakness, and dark skin
A condition where the adrenal glands make too little of a hormone, causing tiredness, weight loss, and darker skin
How Severe
- Specialized
1
6.0
- Specialized
Surface Forms
Morphology
Addison's + disease
The word 'disease' makes it transparently clear that the phrase refers to an illness, but 'Addison's' is an eponymic proper name that gives no information about the cause, symptoms, or affected system. Because the general category (an illness) is derivable from the constituents but the specific clinical meaning is not predictable without prior exposure, the expression is only partially transparent to learners.
Etymology
The name Addison's disease comes from the English doctor Thomas Addison, who first described the illness in the 1800s. He noticed patients with 'weakness', 'low blood pressure', and darker skin because their adrenal glands were not making enough hormones, so the name now refers to this specific hormone disorder.