A medical condition involving shrinkage or wasting away of the stomach tissue, often due to disease or disuse.
From Greek 'gastro-' (stomach) and 'atrophia' (wasting away), which comes from 'a-' (without) and 'trophe' (nourishment). The term literally means the stomach is not receiving proper nourishment and wastes away.
Stomach wasting can happen in severely malnourished people or those with chronic diseases, and doctors can sometimes see the shrinkage on imaging—it's a visible sign of how disease impacts our bodies at the cellular level.
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