Medical Dictionary Definitions A-Z List
Medical Dictionary Definitions A - Z - «S»:
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Sore, cold
Sore, cold: A small sore situated on the face or in the
mouth that causes pain, burning, or itching before bursting and
crusting over. The favorite locations are on the lips, chin or cheeks
and in the nostrils. Less frequented sites are the gums or roof of
the mouth (the palate).
Cold sores, a...
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South Sudan disease
South Sudan disease: Disease in South Sudan, one of the poorest areas in the world and home to many maladies including malaria,
river blindness,
nodding syndrome,
guinea worm disease,
African sleeping sicknness,
visceral leishmaniasis, and
Buruli ulcer.
Some of these diseases are rare or unhea...
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Southeast Asian hemorrhagic fever
Southeast Asian hemorrhagic fever: A syndrome due to the dengue virus that tends to
affect children under 10, causing abdominal pain,
hemorrhage (bleeding) and circulatory collapse (shock).
Known also as dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF), it starts
abruptly with high continuous fever and headache p...
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Southern blot
Southern blot: A test commonly used in molecular biology and genetics, the purpose of the test being to check for a match between DNA molecules.
In the Southern blot technique, DNA fragments are separated by a method called agarose gel electrophoresis, transferred (blotted) onto membrane filters, ...
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Southern tick-associated rash illness
Southern tick-associated rash illness: A disease characterized by a rash like that in Lyme disease, recognized in the southeastern and south-central US, associated with the bite of the lone star tick, Amblyomma americanum. The tick transmits the agent of the disease, a spirochete named Borrelia lone...
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Soy milk allergy
Soy milk allergy: Soy protein formulas contain no cow milk and are therefore reasonable alternatives for infants with true cow milk
allergy.
However, some infants have allergy to both cow milk and soy proteins. These infants require a formula in which the cow milk protein (casein) has been "predi...
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Span, memory
Span, memory: The number of items, usually words or numbers, that a person can retain and recall. Memory span is a test of working memory (short-term memory). In a typical test of memory span, an examiner reads a list of random numbers aloud at about the rate of one number per second. At the end of ...
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Spanish disease
Spanish disease: Syphilis. Depending upon someone's thoughts as to where the disease came from, syphilis was also known as the French, Italian, German and Polish disease....
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Spanish flu
Spanish flu: A pandemic of influenza A (H1N1) in 1918-19 that caused the highest number of known flu deaths. More than 500,000 people died in the United States, and 20 million to 50 million people may have died worldwide. Many people died within the first few days after infection and others died of ...
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Spanish influenza
Spanish influenza: See: Spanish flu....
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Spasm
Spasm: A brief, automatic jerking movement. A
muscle spasm can be quite painful, with the muscle
clenching tightly. A spasm of the coronary artery can cause
angina. Spasms in various types of tissue may be caused by
stress, medication, over-exercise, or other factors.
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Spasm, coronary artery
Spasm, coronary artery: See: Coronary artery spasm....
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Spasm, nictitating
Spasm, nictitating: Spasm of the eyelid with continuous winking.
To nictitiate is to wink. "Nictitate" and the older verb "nictate" both come from the Latin word for winking, "nictare."...
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Spasmodic dysphonia
Spasmodic dysphonia: A voice disorder caused by involuntary movements of one or more muscles of the larynx or voice box. People who have spasmodic dysphonia may have occasional difficulty saying a word or two or they may experience sufficient difficulty to interfere with communication. Spasmodic dys...
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Spasms, infantile
Spasms, infantile: See: Infantile spasms....
