syndrome

A syndrome is a collection of signs and symptoms that tend to occur together and characterize or indicate a particular condition, disease, or abnormality. The term comes from the Greek sundromos, meaning "running together." In medicine, a syndrome describes a recognizable pattern of findings that suggests a diagnosis and guides further investigation and management, rather than describing a single, confirmed cause.

A syndrome may have multiple possible etiologies and may remain descriptive until a specific cause is identified. When a distinct cause is found, the condition may be described as a disease; in some cases, the syndrome itself becomes the disease name.

Conversely, some syndromes are defined by a consistent cluster of features with no single known cause, such as metabolic syndrome or Irritable bowel syndrome. Names of syndromes are frequently derived from researchers, patients, or places, such as Cushing's syndrome or Tourette syndrome.

Syndromes are used across medicine, pediatrics, genetics, and psychology to classify presentations, study prognosis, and tailor treatment. They may be discovered through pattern recognition in clinical practice or identified in research as new phenomena.