Heterogeneous condition

A medical condition is described as heterogeneous, or as a heterogeneous disease, if it has several distinct root causes, as opposed to a homogeneous condition, which has the same root cause in every affected patient, and hepatitis and diabetes are given as examples of such heterogeneous conditions. This heterogeneity arises because medical conditions are usually defined by their pathological state, clinical symptoms or other observable characteristics rather than by their underlying cause, so when treatment depends on identifying the specific cause, doctors use differential diagnosis procedures, and heterogeneous conditions can be further divided into endotypes based on their distinct causes.