Life and health

Missed abortion

Missed abortion, also called missed or silent miscarriage (ICD-11 JA03), is early embryonic or fetal death retained in the uterus without expulsion; diagnosed by ultrasound criteria and managed expectantly, with mifepristone plus misoprostol, or surgically.

Missed Diagnosis

Missed diagnosis: failure to identify a medical condition when a clinician knows the symptoms; one of three diagnostic error types, affecting ~5.7% of ED visits and 0.7% of hospital admissions, causing major preventable harm.

Missense mutation

Missense mutation (missense variant): a single nucleotide substitution that replaces one amino acid with another in a protein; effects range from benign to disease-causing, as in sickle cell HBB p.Glu6Val.

Misshapen ear

Misshapen ear (ICD-11 LA21.3), abnormal shape or position of the outer ear; congenital or acquired. Treated by early infant ear molding (87-92% success) or otoplasty after age 5.

Mission Indradhanush

Mission Indradhanush, India's 2014 catch-up vaccination campaign under the Universal Immunization Programme, targets unvaccinated children and pregnant women in low-coverage districts; its Intensified variant began 2017.

Missulena

Missulena, mouse spiders, is an Australian mygalomorph spider genus (Actinopodidae) with bulbous heads, day-wandering colorful males, and funnel-web-like venom; severe envenoming is rare and treated with funnel-web antivenom.

MISTICH trial

MISTICH names two unrelated intracerebral hemorrhage trials: a 2014 Chinese 20-center randomized trial of minimally invasive surgical techniques, and NCT07338175, a recruiting Beijing Tiantan phase III trial of 5-day oral minocycline in 1192 patients.

Mistletoe

Mistletoe: hemiparasitic flowering plants of Santalales (c. 18 families, 2,200+ species), including Viscum album, attached to tree branches by a haustorium, bird-dispersed, a keystone resource for woodland biodiversity, and a toxic Christmas plant.

Misumena vatia

Misumena vatia, the goldenrod crab spider (Thomisidae, Clerck 1757), is a flower-dwelling ambush predator of bees and flies across Eurasia and North America; females change color white to yellow over 4–7 days, though color-matching does not raise capture success.

MiT family translocation renal cell carcinoma

MiT family translocation renal cell carcinoma (tRCC, Xp11/TFE3 or t(6;11)/TFEB translocation RCC): rare kidney cancer defined by TFE3/TFEB gene fusions, 1-5% of adult RCC, ~40% of pediatric RCC, diagnosed by break-apart FISH.

Mitapivat

Mitapivat (AG-348; Pyrukynd, Aqvesme) is an oral first-in-class allosteric activator of red-cell pyruvate kinase, approved 2022 in the US for pyruvate kinase deficiency and 2025 for thalassemia, with sickle cell disease under FDA priority review.

Sep 20, 2026

Mitch Dowsett

Mitch Dowsett is a British biochemical endocrinologist who initiated the ATAC trial of anastrozole versus tamoxifen and developed the Ki67 response test for breast cancer.

Sep 20, 2026

Mitchell A. Lazar

Mitchell A. Lazar is an American endocrinologist at the University of Pennsylvania who discovered the fat-cell hormone resistin and the circadian receptor REV-ERBα, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2017.

Mitchell D. Schnall

Mitchell D. Schnall is an American radiologist at the University of Pennsylvania known for breast and prostate imaging research and leadership of the ECOG-ACRIN cancer trials group.

Sep 20, 2026

Mitchell Guttman

Mitchell Guttman is an American molecular biologist and professor at Caltech who established long noncoding RNAs as regulators of gene expression and developed SPRITE, a method mapping RNA and DNA inside the cell nucleus.

Mitchell H. Gail

Mitchell H. Gail is an American biostatistician who developed the Gail Model behind the NCI's Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Tool, spending his 1969 to 2025 career at the NCI.

Mitchell J. Weiss

Mitchell J. Weiss is an American hematologist who chairs hematology at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2024.

Mitchell Kronenberg

Mitchell Kronenberg is an American immunologist and President Emeritus of the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, known for work on natural killer T cells and mucosal defense.

Mitchell L. Cohen

Mitchell L. Cohen is an American CDC epidemiologist whose investigations established E. coli O157:H7 as a foodborne pathogen and linked farm antibiotic use to resistant human infections.

Mitchell L. Halperin

Mitchell L. Halperin (1937–2025) was a Canadian nephrologist at St. Michael's Hospital and the University of Toronto, known for research and teaching on fluid, electrolyte, and acid-base disorders.

Mitchell M. Levy

Mitchell M. Levy is an American critical care physician at Brown University, known for the Surviving Sepsis Campaign and sepsis research, and president of the Society of Critical Care Medicine in 2009.

Mitchell S. Albert

Mitchell S. Albert is a physical chemist and medical imaging scientist who co-invented hyperpolarized noble gas MRI, which makes the lung's air spaces visible to MRI.

Mitchell S. Golbus

Mitchell S. Golbus is an American perinatologist-geneticist who pioneered prenatal diagnosis and fetal therapy at UCSF, co-authoring the textbook The Unborn Patient and helping establish fetal surgery.

Mitchell S.V. Elkind

Mitchell S.V. Elkind is an American neurologist and stroke epidemiologist, Columbia professor emeritus and American Heart Association chief science officer, who led the Northern Manhattan Study and the ARCADIA trial.

Mitchell Syndrome

Mitchell syndrome (MITCH, OMIM 618960), also called ACOX1 upregulation, an ultra-rare autosomal dominant peroxisomal neurodegenerative disorder from the de novo ACOX1 p.Asn237Ser gain-of-function variant, causing episodic demyelination, polyneuropathy, and hearing loss; distinct from Mitchell–Riley syndrome.

Mitchell T. Rabkin

Mitchell T. Rabkin is an American endocrinology and diabetes researcher, trained at Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital, who led Boston's Beth Israel Hospital for three decades from 1966.

Mitchell W. Spellman

Mitchell W. Spellman, also known as Mitchell Wright Spellman, was an American surgeon and medical educator who served as founding executive dean of the Charles R. Drew Postgraduate Medical School.

Mite

Mite (Acari): tiny arachnids related to spiders and ticks, 0.1-30 mm long, with over 48,000 described species in two lineages, Acariformes and Parasitiformes, feeding as predators, plant pests, parasites, and decomposers.

Mites affecting humans

Mites affecting humans are small arachnids, from the burrowing scabies mite to house dust and storage mites, that cause itchy skin, asthma, and diseases such as scrub typhus.