disease counting

[GoogleCodeExporter]

in the disease phenotype definition - why a "single disease". How do we count 
diseases -

Suppose we have postprandial hypoglycemia? Is there one disease -
diabetes? or 3? Diabetes, Diabetes type 1, diabetes type 2?

Barry  says: Consider it at the instance level. Problem is that the definition 
uses "characteristic" 
which is a type level sort of thing to say

"A clinically abnormal phenotype that is characteristic of a single disease."

What's the difference between manifestation of a disease and this?

Original issue reported on code.google.com by alanruttenberg@gmail.com on 4 Sep 2009 at 11:15

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Original comment by alanruttenberg@gmail.com on 4 Sep 2009 at 11:16

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Perhaps the definition of 'disease phenotype' should be changed to:

 "A clinically abnormal phenotype that is characteristic of one or more diseases."

This definition assumes that multiple diseases can have a phenotype in common 
and should alleviate some of Alan Ruttenberg's concerns about counting diseases.

In response to the last question, as the classes are currently defined, the 
difference between 'manifestation of a disease' and 'disease phenotype' is that 
the first is a quality of a bearer of a disease whereas the second is a quality 
of a disease.

Original comment by Alexande...@gmail.com on 12 Jun 2012 at 6:46