Reiter's disease

6.5

Inflammation of the joints, eyes, and urinary tract that often follows an infection and mainly affects men

noun
/ˈraɪtərz dɪˈziːz/

Archaic

: enfermedad de Reiter

The doctor diagnosed him with Reiter's disease after noticing the combination of arthritis and eye inflammation.

Examples

She experienced symptoms typical of Reiter's disease shortly after a bacterial infection.
Cases of Reiter's disease are now frequently referred to as reactive arthritis in medical literature.
He has Reiter's disease.
What is Reiter's disease?
The doctor diagnosed him with Reiter's disease after he showed signs of arthritis and conjunctivitis.
She suffered from the painful symptoms of Reiter's disease following a recent infection.
Many males develop Reiter's disease as a reaction to bacterial infections, leading to joint pain and inflammation.

Synonyms

Reiter's syndrome

vsReiter's disease

Archaic

1 8.2

A condition that causes inflammation of the joints, eyes, and urinary tract, often in men

is the same condition but framed as a named illness term

Surface Forms

Reiter's disease singular

Morphology

Reiter's + disease

This is an eponymic name: the proper name 'Reiter's' gives no semantic information about symptoms or cause, and 'disease' only signals an illness in general. The specific meaning (reactive arthritis and its characteristic symptoms) is specialized medical knowledge and not derivable from the constituent words, so a B1 learner who knows the parts would not be able to infer the MWE's meaning.

Etymology

Reiter's disease is named after a doctor, Hans Reiter, who first described the pattern of joint, eye, and urinary problems. Doctors now more often call it 'reactive arthritis' because the body's joints and eyes become inflamed as a reaction that happens after an infection, so the newer name explains the cause.