Asymptomatic (orclinically silent) is an adjective categorising the medical conditions (i.e., injuriesordiseases) that patients carry but without experiencing their symptoms, despite an explicit diagnosis (e.g., a positive medical test).
Pre-symptomatic is the adjective categorising the time periods during which the medical conditions are asymptomatic.
Subclinical and paucisymptomatic are other adjectives categorising either the asymptomatic infections (i.e., subclinical infections), or the psychosomatic illnesses and mental disorders expressing a subset of symptoms but not the entire set an explicit medical diagnosis requires.
An example of an asymptomatic disease is cytomegalovirus (CMV) which is a member of the herpes virus family. "It is estimated that 1% of all newborns are infected with CMV, but the majority of infections are asymptomatic." (Knox, 1983; Kumar et al. 1984)[1] In some diseases, the proportion of asymptomatic cases can be important. For example, in multiple sclerosis it is estimated that around 25% of the cases are asymptomatic, with these cases detected postmortem or just by coincidence (asincidental findings) while treating other diseases.[2]
Knowing that a condition is asymptomatic is important because:
Subclinical or subthreshold conditions are those for which the full diagnostic criteria are not met and have not been met in the past, although symptoms are present. This can mean that symptoms are not severe enough to merit a diagnosis,[6] or that symptoms are severe but do not meet the criteria of a condition.[7]
These are conditions for which there is a sufficient number of documented individuals that are asymptomatic that it is clinically noted. For a complete list of asymptomatic infections see subclinical infection.
Millions of women reported lack of symptoms during pregnancy until the point of childbirth or the beginning of labor; they didn't know they were pregnant. This phenomenon is known as cryptic pregnancies.[8]
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