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Difference between congenital and acquired disease

It can be very difficult for an individual person to try to gain an understanding and knowledge of illnesses, conditions, diseases, abnormalities and disorders to understand the major difference between a congenital illness or condition or a disease and an acquired  condition or disease. While both of the diseases may look similar to each other because both of them are present in a patient’s body from birth, it actually does make a difference how and when an illness, disease or condition is contracted as to whether it should be called as an acquired disease or should be called as a congenital disease.

Acquired disease

The changes that constitute acquired characteristics can have many manifestations and degrees of visibility but they all have one thing in common: they change a facet of a living organisms’ function or structure after the organism has left the womb.

An acquired disease or a condition is one that not genetically predetermined. It can be gotten just after birth and / or for the rest of your life by external factors. Let’s look at AIDS which means Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome or Acquired immune deficiency syndrome. It is giving this name because it is caused by the HIV virus but you may want to say it’s a congenital diseases because there is a chance it can pass from mother to child  but this is rare when you compare the other ways it is aquired which through sexual contact.

Things may get complicated while moving further, some illnesses and diseases are deemed acquired and also inherited– such as some mental illnesses and diabetes, but just having a predisposition for the illness does not surely mean it will develop. A person,  lifestyle choices, overall health  may cause deficiency in production of insulin by the pancreas so is this case the diabetes is aquired .

Congenital disease

A congenital disease or condition is one that develops from genetics  , external factors and from influences which occur while the child is still in-utero. At different stages of fetal development, the fetus may or may not be sensitive or at risk for abnormalities and disabilities – such as congenital heart and other organ disorders. This may be because of the environmental factors, the health or condition of the mother, or for unknown reasons, a fetus may develop an illness, disease, condition or other abnormality that will be present when he or she is born.

Major difference

  •  A congenital disease period of occurance is during or just after  birth while aquired disease occur after birth or for the rest of your life
  • Congenital disease can be inherited by genes or caused by environmental or external factors  aquired disease is caused only by environmental or external factors .
  • Congenital disease are causes by genes  or chromosomes mutation while aquired disease can be caused by degeneration of tissues, pathogens , cancer growth , hormones etc

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