atresia
/əˈtriːʃə
/ /əˈtriːziə/noun [mass noun]
1 Medicine Absence or abnormal narrowing of an opening or passage in the body.The Foundation is of vital importance to Sarah and her family because her youngest daughter, Carol, was diagnosed last year with a rare liver disease called biliary atresia....
- The main objective of our study was to identify chromosomal regions possibly containing putative disease loci involved in the etiology of anal atresia.
- Mary has pulmonary atresia, a condition that means the heart and the main blood vessel to the lungs have failed to develop properly.
2 Physiology The degeneration of those ovarian follicles which do not ovulate during the menstrual cycle.The process by which follicles degenerate and disappear is little understood and is termed follicular atresia....
- Furthermore, they may cause premature depletion of the follicle pool by induction of follicular atresia or oocyte apoptosis and, thereby, lead to reduced fertility.
- These structures form through a process of follicular atresia accompanied by hypertrophy of the follicular cells.
Origin
Early 19th century: from a-1 'without' + Greek trēsis 'perforation' + -ia1.