Glossary index
Medical terms beginning with K
Browse medical definitions and meanings in the complete glossary, or choose a letter to narrow the list.
37 medical terms in this glossary begin with the letter K, from Kahler disease onward. Every entry gives a plain-language definition, and most add a pronunciation, the word parts it is built from, and related terms.
This is also the place to look for medical words, health words, anatomy terms and disease names starting with K.
K terms
37 results-
A type of cancer that begins in plasma cells (white blood cells that produce antibodies).
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A combination of the drugs ritonavir and lopinavir.
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A type of cancer characterized by the abnormal growth of blood vessels that develop into skin lesions or occur internally.
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A Pacific island drink turned capsule, calming enough to show up in trials and tied to rare but severe liver injury.
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Healing that does not know when to stop, producing a scar that keeps spreading outward long after the injury underneath has closed.
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Large brown seaweed sold as a supplement, notable in medicine mainly for how much iodine it carries.
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A drug that is used to treat certain types of muscle spasms and is being studied in the treatment of liver cancer.
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A glycosaminoglycan (a type of polysaccharide) found in cartilage and in the cornea of the eye.
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A natural substance that stimulates the growth of epithelial cells in the skin and in the lining of the mouth, stomach, and intestines.
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This dome shaped skin growth appears within weeks and often resolves untreated, yet it can be nearly indistinguishable from squamous cell carcinoma.
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A drug used to cause a loss of feeling and awareness and to induce sleep in patients having surgery.
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Their presence alone says little; what matters is whether the body chose to make them or was driven to it by missing insulin.
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One of a pair of organs in the abdomen.
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Kidney cancer includes renal cell carcinoma in adults and Wilms tumor in young children, arising from different structures within the kidney.
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A condition in which the kidneys stop working and are not able to remove waste and extra water from the blood or keep body chemicals in balance.
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A test in which blood or urine samples are checked for the amounts of certain substances released by the kidneys.
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Pain comes from the blocked tube stretching above the stone rather than from the stone scraping its way along.
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The immune system's targeted assassin, destroying one marked cell at a time while leaving its healthy neighbors untouched.
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A kilogram is the standard metric unit of body weight in medicine, central to accurate weight based drug dosing calculations.
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A substance that is used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, and is being studied in the treatment of cancer.
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A kinase is an enzyme that adds a phosphate group to another molecule, a reaction central to cell signaling, metabolism, and growth.
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A substance that causes blood stem cells (cells from which other types of cells develop) to change into different types of blood cells and increases the number and actions of these cells in the blood.
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A tumor whose whole difficulty is its address: small, slow to declare itself, and sitting where the liver's plumbing converges.
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A bacterium that frequently causes lung, urinary tract, intestinal, and wound infections.
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A substance taken from a marine organism that may be linked to a specific antigen to boost the immune response to that antigen.
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Among the commonest chromosome differences in people, and among the most often missed, because the outward signs are easy to overlook.
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A substance being studied in the treatment of cancer.
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An inherited disorder in which there is a lower-than-normal number of neutrophils (a type of white blood cell that is important in fighting infections).
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An inherited disorder in which there is a lower-than-normal number of neutrophils (a type of white blood cell that is important in fighting infections).
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An inherited disorder in which there is a lower-than-normal number of neutrophils (a type of white blood cell that is important in fighting infections).
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A gene that may cause cancer when it is mutated (changed).
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A kretek is a clove-flavored cigarette that combines tobacco with ground cloves and other additives during manufacturing.
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A drug being studied in the treatment of cancer.
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Cancer found in the ovary that started in the stomach, and a sign the original disease has already traveled.
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A type of herpesvirus that may cause Kaposi sarcoma (a rare cancer that can cause skin lesions) and a type of lymphoma (cancer that begins in the lymph system), especially in patients who have a…
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A semisynthetic anticancer drug that is a type of antitumor antibiotic.
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A substance being studied in the treatment of cancer.