Medical terms beginning with C

A laboratory test to measure carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), a substance that is sometimes found in an increased amount in the blood of people who have certain cancers.

Wide, blind-ended and full of liquid contents, it hides trouble for longer than the narrow left side of the colon does.

A fragrant oil sold for aromatherapy and for repelling insects, distilled from several unrelated trees, most of which are not cedars.

Cefepime is a broad spectrum antibiotic from a later cephalosporin generation, given intravenously to treat serious infections including certain resistant bacteria.

Broad coverage is not complete coverage, and what ceftriaxone misses, including Pseudomonas and enterococci, matters as much as what it reaches.

A digestive disease that is caused by an immune response to a protein called gluten, which is found in wheat, rye, barley, and oats.

Everything a body does happens inside one of these compartments, which is why disease is ultimately described at this scale.

The laboratory craft of keeping living cells growing outside the body, which depends more on excluding contamination than on feeding them.

Most cells in the body are not in the cycle at all, so the interesting question is what pulls them back into it.

How one fertilized egg becomes hundreds of cell types without changing its genes, and the yardstick a pathologist uses to grade a tumor.

The ability of a cell to move.

An increase in the number of cells as a result of cell growth and cell division.

The controlled release of energy from food inside a cell, captured as ATP rather than lost all at once as heat.

Cells cannot see each other, so everything they coordinate has to travel as a molecule, a touch, or a direct electrical link.

The close adherence (bonding) to adjoining cell surfaces.

A treatment used to help the immune system fight diseases, such as cancer and infections with certain viruses.

Two opposite streams of chemistry running at once inside every cell, one tearing molecules down and one building them up.

Redness appearing on both legs at once is rarely cellulitis, since the infection almost always settles on one side only.

Cellulose is the fibrous carbohydrate forming plant cell walls that passes through the human digestive tract largely undigested.

Cancer that has spread from the original (primary) tumor to the central nervous system (CNS).