ORPHA:2077
German syndrome
Also known as: Hypotonia-arthrogryposis-facial dysmorphism-lymphedema syndrome
Query health: suspect — Only one of 2 strategies returned hits (phrase).
Clinical definition (Orphanet)
German syndrome is an arthrogryposis syndrome, described in 5 cases. Three of the four known families with affected children were Ashkenazi Jews. German syndrome is characterized by arthrogryposis, -hypokinesia sequence, and lymphedema. Patients present distinct craniofacial appearance (tall forehead and ''carp''-shaped mouth, cleft palate), contractures, severe manifesting as motor delay, and swallowing difficulties. The disease has a severe morbidity and mortality rate and survivors present a small stature, , frequent upper respiratory infections, and psychomotor delay. There have been no further descriptions in the literature since 1987.
How rare: <1 / 1 000 000 — fewer than one in a million. In a city the size of Kolkata, that might mean on the order of fifteen people.
Is anyone studying this?
4
4 papers have ever been indexed under this name. For scale, breast cancer has over 700,000. Median papers in the last 10 years for a rare disease in this dataset (publications denominator n=183) is 38.
4 papers since the earliest indexed year in this search — median last-10-year count for a rare disease in this dataset is 38 (publications denominator n=183).
0 in the last 10 years · medium confidence · 2.5th percentile (publications denominator)
Is a treatment being tested?
0
trials for this specific condition
No interventional trial testing a treatment matched this specific condition name on ClinicalTrials.gov (observational studies and pan-disease registries are listed separately when present).
Data as of 26 July 2026
No matched interventional trials. This is true for 59.2% of diseases in the trials denominator (151 of 255). Here are the researchers publishing on it.
medium confidence · 29.6th percentile (trials denominator)
Do we know what causes it?
Not yet — the cause hasn't been pinned down in GenCC.
No strong gene–disease assertion joined for this Orphanet entity.
Who's working on it?
8
Distinct author names in 4 sampled papers — named people below.
Who's working on it?
No interventional trial matched this name; these authors publish on it in the sampled literature — a practical starting point for contact.
- 01Bellini C1 paper · 2006
Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, Department of Pediatrics, University of Genoa, G, Gaslini Institute, Genoa, Italy. carlobellini@ospedale-gaslini.ge.it
Papers in Europe PMC - 02Benson MD1 paper · 1991
Department of Medicine, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis 46223.
Papers in Europe PMC - 03Boccardo F1 paper · 2006Papers in Europe PMC
- 04Bonioli E1 paper · 2006Papers in Europe PMC
- 05Campisi C1 paper · 2006Papers in Europe PMC
- 06Hughes HE1 paper · 1987Papers in Europe PMC
- 07Leiber B1 paper · 1975Papers in Europe PMC
- 08Lewin SO1 paper · 1987Papers in Europe PMC
Recruiting interventional trials
Trials testing a treatment from the matched ClinicalTrials.gov set
No interventional trial testing a treatment was found for this specific condition name on ClinicalTrials.gov.
See who's working on it above — people publishing on this disease are often the practical next contact when no trial is listed.
Where to find support
We do not yet link condition-specific patient organisations. These umbrella groups support undiagnosed and ultra-rare families:
India — NPRD
Last verified 2026-07-26This ORPHAcode is not on our curated NPRD list (direct or Mondo-parent match). That does not decide clinical eligibility; families in India should ask a notified Centre of Excellence about current coverage.
Hand-curated for this project. ORPHAcode mappings are best-effort and may be incomplete or imprecise for umbrella categories. Parent (Mondo) matches mean the policy lists a broader category — confirm eligibility with a Centre of Excellence. Financial entitlements summarised from public policy statements and may change. This is not official government guidance.
How we counted this
Europe PMC query (preferred label + any corrected label + Orphanet and Mondo exact synonyms, stoplisted; unioned with resolved MeSH labels when available). UMLS / OMIM / NCIT cross-references are stored below but are not added to the query string.
"German syndrome" OR "Hypotonia-arthrogryposis-facial dysmorphism-lymphedema syndrome"
MeSH descriptor terms unioned into the query: German Syndrome
ClinicalTrials.gov query (quoted phrases + MeSH via query.cond, plus recall-expansion terms when used):
"German syndrome" OR "Hypotonia-arthrogryposis-facial dysmorphism-lymphedema syndrome"
Study-type breakdown: 0 interventional · 0 observational · 0 expanded access. Only interventional studies enter the trial headline.
Cross-references (from Mondo): MESH:C562543 OMIM:231080 UMLS:C3887495
Query health: suspect — strategies attempted: phrase, mesh; with hits: phrase
Run this search on ClinicalTrials.gov
Confidence reasoning
- Preferred label is short or not clearly distinctive
- No synonyms dropped by stoplist
- No label/synonym collisions with other diseases in this corpus