Is it Your Disease or the Patient’s?

Abstract

6 Sou .com The issue of apostrophe “s” in eponyms has frequently arisen during our Journal Clubs and other seminars. On multiple occasions, we have encountered an eponym of a particular disease or syndrome including an “s” with an apostrophe by certain medical writers and without an “s” apostrophe by other medical writers. By the way, these 2 terms (disease and syndrome) too are sometimes used interchangeably. Generally speaking, when the illness has several clinical features or laboratory findings or both, but not all are present in every patient or are required to establish the diagnosis, it is usually called a syndrome rather than a disease. Let us go back to the controversy of the incorrect use of apostrophe “s,” which has prevailed throughout scientific writings and oral presentations. Over the years, the medical literature has been inconsistent, predominated by the incorrect use. Strictly speaking, apostrophe “s” reflects possessiveness. It is correct when the syndrome or disease is named after the first described patient (e.g., Lou Gehrig’s disease, Job’s syndrome or Duncan’s disease). Much more commonly, a syndrome or disease has been linked to the name of the physician or the scientist who first described it, as an honorific eponym (e.g., Bruton hypogammaglobulinemia, Churg-Strauss syndrome, DiGeorge syndrome, Hodgkin lymphoma, Sjogren syndrome and Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome). In such instances, an apostrophe or an “s” should not be used. The same applies to physical signs, microorganisms, procedures or tests. Apostrophe before or after the “s” would be inappropriate in cases like Wilms tumor and Coombs test because the “s” here is a part of the name of the scientist. By searching the history of common eponyms in a variety of textbooks, Wikipedia and other sources, we created a list (Table) of common eponyms with