medicine Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care pract ...

the term course generally takes one of two meanings, both reflecting the sense of " path that something or someone moves along...process or sequence or steps": * A course of

medication A medication (also called medicament, medicine, pharmaceutical drug, medicinal drug or simply drug) is a drug used to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent disease. Drug therapy (pharmacotherapy) is an important part of the medical field and re ...

is a period of continual treatment with drugs, sometimes with variable dosage and in particular combinations. For instance treatment with some drugs should not end abruptly. Instead, their course should end with a tapering dosage. :*

Antibiotics An antibiotic is a type of antimicrobial substance active against bacteria. It is the most important type of antibacterial agent for fighting bacterial infections, and antibiotic medications are widely used in the treatment and prevention o ...

: Taking the full course of antibiotics is important to prevent reinfection and/or development of drug-resistant bacteria. :* Steroids: For both short-term and long-term steroid treatment, when stopping treatment, the dosage is tapered rather than abruptly ended. This permits the

adrenal gland The adrenal glands (also known as suprarenal glands) are endocrine glands that produce a variety of hormones including adrenaline and the steroids aldosterone and cortisol. They are found above the kidneys. Each gland has an outer cortex which ...

s to resume the body's natural production of

cortisol Cortisol is a steroid hormone, in the glucocorticoid class of hormones. When used as a medication, it is known as hydrocortisone. It is produced in many animals, mainly by the ''zona fasciculata'' of the adrenal cortex in the adrenal gland ...

. Abrupt discontinuation can result in adrenal insufficiency; and/or steroid withdrawal syndrome (a

rebound effect The rebound effect, or rebound phenomenon, is the emergence or re-emergence of symptoms that were either absent or controlled while taking a medication, but appear when that same medication is discontinued, or reduced in dosage. In the case of re ...

in which exaggerated symptoms return). * The course of a disease, also called its natural history, refers to the development of the

disease A disease is a particular abnormal condition that negatively affects the structure or function of all or part of an organism, and that is not immediately due to any external injury. Diseases are often known to be medical conditions that a ...

in a patient, including the sequence and speed of the stages and forms they take. Typical courses of diseases include: :* chronic :* recurrent or

relapsing In internal medicine, relapse or recidivism is a recurrence of a past (typically medical) condition. For example, multiple sclerosis and malaria often exhibit peaks of activity and sometimes very long periods of dormancy, followed by relapse or r ...

:* subacute: somewhere between an acute and a chronic course :*

acute Acute may refer to: Science and technology * Acute angle ** Acute triangle ** Acute, a leaf shape in the glossary of leaf morphology * Acute (medicine), a disease that it is of short duration and of recent onset. ** Acute toxicity, the adverse eff ...

: beginning abruptly, intensifying rapidly, not lasting long :*

fulminant Fulminant () is a medical descriptor for any event or process that occurs suddenly and escalates quickly, and is intense and severe to the point of lethality, i.e., it has an explosive character. The word comes from Latin ''fulmināre'', to strik ...

or peracute: particularly acute, especially if unusually violent A patient may be said to be at the beginning, the middle or the end, or at a particular stage of the course of a disease or a treatment. A precursor is a sign or event that precedes the course or a particular stage in the course of a disease, for example chills often are precursors to fevers.

References

{{reflist Medical terminology Pharmacodynamics