Library / English Dictionary

ENCEPHALOPATHY

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Any disorder or disease of the brain

Synonyms:

brain disease; brain disorder; encephalopathy

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Hypernyms ("encephalopathy" is a kind of...):

nervous disorder; neurological disease; neurological disorder (a disorder of the nervous system)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "encephalopathy"):

epilepsy (a disorder of the central nervous system characterized by loss of consciousness and convulsions)

apraxia (inability to make purposeful movements)

paralysis agitans; Parkinson's; Parkinson's disease; Parkinson's syndrome; Parkinsonism; shaking palsy (a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system characterized by tremor and impaired muscular coordination)

cerebral palsy; spastic paralysis (a loss or deficiency of motor control with involuntary spasms caused by permanent brain damage present at birth)

agraphia; anorthography; logagraphia (a loss of the ability to write or to express thoughts in writing because of a brain lesion)

acataphasia (a disorder in which a lesion to the central nervous system leaves you unable to formulate a statement or to express yourself in an organized manner)

aphasia (inability to use or understand language (spoken or written) because of a brain lesion)

agnosia (inability to recognize objects by use of the senses)

CJD; Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease; Jakob-Creutzfeldt disease (rare (usually fatal) brain disease (usually in middle age) caused by an unidentified slow virus; characterized by progressive dementia and gradual loss of muscle control)

Reye's syndrome (acquired encephalopathy following acute viral infections (especially influenza or chicken pox) in young children; characterized by fever, vomiting, disorientation, coma, and fatty infiltration of the liver)

Wernicke's encephalopathy (inflammatory degenerative disease of the brain caused by thiamine deficiency that is usually associated with alcoholism)

Credits

 Context examples: 

MCPG is known to cause hypoglycaemic encephalopathy, a metabolic illness that affects the brain when body sugar levels are low due to fasting or undernourishment.

(Lychee deaths linked to pesticides, not the fruit, SciDev.Net)

A rare progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterized by mitochondrial myopathy, encephalopathy, lactic acidosis, and stroke-like episodes.

(MELAS Syndrome, NCI Thesaurus)

Encephalopathy in infants due to high levels of unconjugated bilirubin that are a result of Rh incompatibility between the mother and the fetus.

(Kernicterus due to Isoimmunization, NCI Thesaurus)

It is usually caused by alcoholisms, hepatitis B, and hepatitis C. Complications include the development of ascites, esophageal varices, bleeding, and hepatic encephalopathy.

(Cirrhosis, NCI Thesaurus)

The disease, called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), is believed to be caused by repeated head trauma and has been known to cause memory loss, disorientation, depression and impaired judgement, among other symptoms.

(Study: Brain Disease Found in Nearly All Deceased US Football Players, VOA News)

Other prion diseases include scrapie in sheep and bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, in cattle.

(Study finds no chronic wasting disease transmissibility in macaques, National Institutes of Health)

Amyloidogenesis is the formation or growth of amyloid structures, implicated in many human diseases including Alzheimer s disease (AD), Parkinson s disease (PD), type II diabetes, and spongiform encephalopathies.

(Amyloidogenesis, NCI Thesaurus)

Cattle can get a disease related to CJD called bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or "mad cow disease."

(Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, NIH: National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke)

These chronic neurological symptoms have been linked to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) — progressive brain degeneration that leads to dementia following repetitive TBIs — independent of other factors such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

(Key protein found to have role in long-term complications from traumatic brain injury, NIH)

An ultrasensitive test has been developed that detects a corrupted protein associated with Alzheimer’s disease and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a condition found in athletes, military veterans, and others with a history of repetitive brain trauma.

(New test detects protein associated with Alzheimer’s and CTE, National Institutes of Health)