Pathology 2420A Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Base Pair, Microcephaly, Familial Hypercholesterolemia

• School: Western University
• Department: Pathology
• Course: Pathology 2420A
• Professor: Candace Gibson

Document Summary

This module gives you some fundamental definitions of disease and related terminology and the framework by which to classify disease. Iatrogenic - disease caused as the result of a medical treatment. Idiopathic - of unknown origin; used when we don"t know the cause of disease. Definition of pathology: pathology is the study of disease. "disease" or "suffering", and logos or logia meaning "study" pathology is literally the study of suffering and illness. In particular, pathology is the study of the structural and functional changes in cells, tissues, and organs of the body that cause, or are caused by, disease. In most cases though, these changes appear late in the disease process, long after a disease is present and has been acting at the cellular level. The incidence represents the number of new cases arising in a population over a given time period and the prevalence is the total number of cases of the disease in a given population.