increase and decrease

P

Pidginboy

Senior Member
India-Local dialect
How can one describe the increase and decrease in some diseases like fever, cold, arthritis, leprosy, AIDS, heart ailment?

(Example: Fever is on rise today, though it decreased yesterday.)
 
    • I'm afraid I don't quite understand what you would like to know. Do you mean their frequency or something like the temperature changs they bring? (By the way, you would need to say on the rise.)
     
    Are you looking for verbs? You can use go up, rise, lower, or grow (among others) to describe an increase and go down or lower (among others) to describe a decrease.
     
    Different words would be used in a medical context for different phenomena related to these diseases in a patient. Still other words would be used if you are talking about the statistical incidence of the disease in a particular population.

    Can you give us more details about your question?
     
    Thanks, NT. I want to describe the diseases when they sometimes become worse and sometimes give relief to the afflicted. For example:
    The fever went up yesteday but today came down.
    The flu became severe yesterday but today it gave some relief.
     
    In spoken AE it would not be unusual to use "worse" and "better".

    Her cold got worse over the weekend but now it's better.
    Her flu is worse today than yesterday.
    Her fever has gotten worse this evening.
    I noticed that his cough is getting better.

    It doesn't sound logical, I know, and it can sometimes give rise to very tired old jokes about a cold "getting better", but it is very, very common to speak this way.
     
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