Syndrome (from the Greek syndrome — accumulation, confluence) — a certain combination of signs (symptoms) that have a common mechanism of occurrence. In medicine, the syndrome characterizes a clearly expressed disease state of the body.
In medicine and psychology, the term syndrome refers to the association of a number of clinically recognizable symptoms (features, phenomena, or characteristics) that often occur together, such that the presence of one feature alerts the clinician to the presence of the others. In recent decades, the term has also been used outside of medicine to describe similar phenomena.
In technical medical parlance, a syndrome concerns only a set of detectable characteristics. A particular disease, condition, or disorder may be identified as the underlying cause. Once the physical cause has been identified, the word «syndrome» sometimes remains in the disease’s name.
The term syndrome comes from the Greek and means literally «ruled together», as it usually is. It most often occurs when the cause and/or features occur together (syndrome pathophysiology). The term syndrome often continues to be used even after the underlying cause has been found, or when there are a number of different underlying causes giving rise to the same combination of symptoms and signatures. Many syndromes are named after the scientists who first described them: Down’s syndrome, Skumin’s syndrome, Tourette’s syndrome, etc.