cachexia

A systemic wasting of muscle tissue, with or without loss of fat mass, that accompanies a chronic disease.

Noun

  1. A systemic wasting of muscle tissue, with or without loss of fat mass, that accompanies a chronic disease.
    • An handful of the Leavs or Roots [of garden succory] boyled in Wine or Water, and a draught thereof drunk faſting, […] helpeth the yellow Jaundice, the Heat of the Reins and of the Urin, and the Dropſie also, and thoſe...
    • [T]he intimate nature of cachexia is a deterioration in the qualities of blood, a favourite doctrine with the humoral pathologists, in support of which many very powerful arguments might still be adduced. - 1830, George...
    • If we have hitherto no approach to a physiological expression for those autopathic cachexiæ in which gout, scrofula, and cancer respectively originate, let it be observed that our faculty of analogical interpretation...

    Synonyms: cachexy

    Hypernyms: wasting

    Coordinate Terms: sarcopenia

Origin

From Late Latin cachexia or French cachexie, from Ancient Greek καχεξία (kakhexía), from κακός (kakós, “bad; injurious”) + ἕξῐς (héxĭs, “act of having; habit or state of body”) (ultimately from ἔχω (ékhō, “to have”)) + -ῐᾰ (-ĭă, suffix added to adjectives to form abstract nouns).

Forms

cachexias cachexiae

Related

chronic wasting disease waste away

Derived

anticachectic cachectic cachexia Africana cachexic cachexy phosphorus cachexia procachectic