Disease's medical names worry people more than lay terms

The researchers found that the results pattern has implications for the patient-if a patient is informed that she has gastro esophageal reflux disease, for example, rather than chronic heartburn, she might think she is more ill.

One of the important implication is that patients'' understanding of the condition heavily influences how they go about taking care of their own health.

For established medical conditions, researchers found that it did not make a difference in perception if a lay term was used or if subjects were presented with the medicalised language.

"We can see that there are a number of conditions where the medicalese term has, over the past ten years or so, been really rising in how often it is used, compared to the lay term for the same thing. This is particularly important when you have lots of conditions that have recently become medicalised, some of them possibly through the influence of pharmaceutical companies, who want to make you think that you have a disease that will need to be treated with a drug," said Humphreys.

The study is published online in the journal Public Library of Science:

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