Canadian Medical Guide > Diseases > Nutritional and Metabolic Diseases > Nutrition Disorders > Malnutrition > Deficiency Diseases Terms and Definitions

Deficiency Diseases

Medical Definition:	A condition produced by dietary or metabolic deficiency. The term includes all diseases caused by an insufficient supply of essential nutrients, i.e., protein (or amino acids), vitamins, and minerals. It also includes an inadequacy of calories. (From Dorland, 27th ed; Stedman, 25th ed)
Guide Notes:	GEN only: prefer /defic with specific Cat D terms: Manual 19.7+, 19.8.21; also Manual 23.25+; do not confuse with NUTRITION DISORDERS: DEFICIENCY DISEASES results from deficient intake; TN 194: as NIM & differentiation from METABOLIC DISEASES or METABOLIS

Deficiency Diseases Categories.

	Avitaminosis - A condition due to a deficiency of one or more essential vitamins. (Dorland, 27th ed)
	Magnesium Deficiency - A nutritional condition produced by a deficiency of magnesium in the diet, characterized by anorexia, nausea, vomiting, lethargy, and weakness. Symptoms are paresthesias, muscle cramps, irritability, decreased attention span, and mental confusion, possibly requiring months to appear. Deficiency of body magnesium can exist even when serum values are normal. In addition, magnesium deficiency may be organ-selective, since certain tissues become deficient before others. (Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, 12th ed, p1936)
	Potassium Deficiency - A condition due to decreased dietary intake of potassium, as in starvation or failure to administer in intravenous solutions, or to gastrointestinal loss in diarrhea, chronic laxative abuse, vomiting, gastric suction, or bowel diversion. Severe potassium deficiency may produce muscular weakness and lead to paralysis and respiratory failure. Muscular malfunction may result in hypoventilation, paralytic ileus, hypotension, muscle twitches, tetany, and rhabomyolysis. Nephropathy from potassium deficit impairs the concentrating mechanism, producing polyuria and decreased maximal urinary concentrating ability with secondary polydipsia. (Merck Manual, 16th ed)
	Protein Deficiency - A nutritional condition produced by a deficiency of proteins in the diet, characterized by adaptive enzyme changes in the liver, increase in amino acid synthetases, and diminution of urea formation, thus conserving nitrogen and reducing its loss in the urine. Growth, immune response, repair, and production of enzymes and hormones are all impaired in severe protein deficiency. Protein deficiency may also arise in the face of adequate protein intake if the protein is of poor quality (i.e., the content of one or more amino acids is inadequate and thus becomes the limiting factor in protein utilization). (From Merck Manual, 16th ed; Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, 12th ed, p406)
	Swayback - Congenital locomotor ataxia of lambs, thought to be associated with copper deficiency. It is characterized clinically by progressive incoordination of the hind limbs and pathologically by disruption of neuron and myelin development in the central nervous system. It is caused by a deficiency of metabolizable copper in the ewe during the last half of her pregnancy. (Dorland, 28th ed; Stedman, 26th ed)

Deficiency Diseases Medical Definitions and Terms

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