Bone, Joint and Muscle Terms

An anatomy term for an X-shaped crossing (for example, of nerves or tendons).

Chondrocytes are the sole resident cells of cartilage, embedded within the tissue's own matrix and responsible for producing and maintaining it.

A long sugar chain bristling with negative charge, which drags in water and lets cartilage spring back after every step.

Chondrosarcoma is a cancer that forms in cartilage, most often affecting the pelvis, ribs, or the ends of long bones.

A rare midline bone tumor grown from embryonic leftovers, slow to develop but stubbornly local and prone to returning.

A type of cancer that grows into the muscular wall of the uterus.

A disease in which too many eosinophils (a type of white blood cell) are found in the bone marrow, blood, and other tissues.

A slowly progressing disease in which too many white blood cells (not lymphocytes) are made in the bone marrow.

A progressive, chronic disease in which the bone marrow is replaced by fibrous tissue and blood is made in organs such as the liver and the spleen, instead of in the bone marrow.

Slow growing blood cancers whose cells mature far enough to function, which is why they are so often found by accident.

This slow-progressing blood cancer results from an acquired genetic change that causes the bone marrow to overproduce white blood cells.

A slowly progressing type of myelodysplastic/myeloproliferative disease in which too many myelomonocytes (a type of white blood cell) are in the bone marrow, crowding out other normal blood cells…

A procedure that uses gold salts (a salt form of the metal element gold) to treat diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis.

The only bony strut between the arm and the trunk, lying under thin skin where it can be seen and felt along its whole length.

A soft tissue tumor that begins in a tendon (tough, fibrous, cord-like tissue that connects muscle to bone or to another structure).

Cells that look mature and behave uselessly accumulate for years, which is why a diagnosis often arrives long before any treatment does.

An indolent (slow-growing) cancer in which immature lymphocytes (white blood cells) are found in the blood and bone marrow and/or in the lymph nodes.

A drug used in the treatment of hypercalcemia (abnormally high levels of calcium in the blood) and cancer that has spread to the bone (bone metastases).

CML is a slow progressing blood cancer marked by overproduction of white blood cells, most often driven by a specific chromosomal abnormality.

A marrow disorder sitting between two families of blood disease, defined by a stubbornly high count of one white cell type.