RARE DISEASERESEARCH ATLAS

ORPHA:2185

Congenital hydrocephalus

low confidenceDisorder

Publications

4,768

Trials

1

Interventional, condition-specific

Researchers

1,180

Distinct authors in sample

Gene link

LDB1

Strong

Readiness

4/6

Stages with a signal

Clinical definition (Orphanet)

A rare central nervous system characterized by abnormally enlarged cerebral ventricles due to impaired cerebrospinal fluid circulation. It arises in utero and can be either acquired or inherited. The severity of the resulting brain damage depends on the duration and extent of ventriculomegaly.

How rare: How common this is has not been clearly measured.

Orphanet entry

Cross-references

Joined from Mondo / Orphanet. MeSH labels may enter searches; UMLS / OMIM / NCIT are stored for reference.

Additional Mondo synonyms (1)

congenital hydrocephalus

Research stages

Trial readiness signals

Where this condition sits on an open-data research pipeline — not how close a treatment is, and not medical advice. Empty stages often mean “not in these databases under this Mondo ID,” not “impossible.”

4/6 stages with a signal

An interventional trial matched this condition name on ClinicalTrials.gov — see trials below.

  1. Gene identifiedPresent

    Strong — LDB1

  2. LiteraturePresent

    4,768 matched papers (2,432 in last 10 years) Source

  3. Phenotype characterisedPresent

    94 HPO annotations (e.g. Seizure; Hydrocephalus; Ventriculomegaly) Source

  4. Animal modelNot found

    No Alliance genotype “model of” associations via Monarch for these Mondo IDs

  5. Orphan designationNot found

    No FDA or EMA orphan-drug designation matched this disease via UMLS or preferred name Source

  6. Interventional trialPresent

    1 matched on ClinicalTrials.gov (1 recruiting in sample)

Biology

Genes and phenotypes

Gene–disease validity from GenCC, plus phenotypes and animal models joined from Monarch Initiative via Mondo ID — not a clinical diagnosis aid.

Do we know what causes it?

Yes — we know a specific gene responsible (LDB1).

GenCC classification: Strong.

Phenotypes (Monarch / HPO)

94

Associated phenotypes · MONDO:0016349

  • Seizure
  • Hydrocephalus
  • Ventriculomegaly
  • Intellectual disability
  • Sensorineural hearing impairment

Showing 5 of 94 — open Monarch for the full list.

Animal models (Monarch / Alliance)

None returned for this Mondo ID. Empty here is not proof that no model organism work exists under another name or gene.

Monarch fetch 2026-07-29

Therapies

Designations, candidates, and chemicals

FDA OOPD and EMA orphan designations, Open Targets clinical candidates, and CTD chemical associations via MyDisease.info. These never change the interventional-trial headline.

Orphan designation (FDA · EMA)

No designation matched this disease via UMLS or preferred name on the FDA OOPD mirror or EMA orphan register. Absence here is not proof that none exists under another wording.

Open Targets candidates

1

Drugs / clinical candidates · MONDO_0016349

CTD chemicals (MyDisease.info)

No CTD chemical associations returned for this Mondo ID.

Literature

Is anyone studying this?

4,768

4,768 papers have been published on this condition. That is a real research literature — still far smaller than common diseases (breast cancer: over 700,000 papers). Median papers in the last 10 years for a rare disease in this dataset (publications denominator n=3967) is 59.

4,768 papers since the earliest indexed year in this search — median last-10-year count for a rare disease in this dataset is 59 (publications denominator n=3967).

2,432 in the last 10 years · low confidence

Phrase hits: 3,218 · MeSH hits: 0

Open Europe PMC search

Who's working on it?

1,180

Distinct author names in 200 sampled papers — named people below.

Who's working on it?

People publishing on this condition (sampled Europe PMC records). Affiliation is the most recent found in that sample.

  1. 01
    Kahle KT10 papers · 2026

    Department of Neurosurgery, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA 02114, USA.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  2. 02
    Duy PQ8 papers · 2026

    Department of Neuroscience, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06510, USA.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  3. 03
    Allington G6 papers · 2026

    Department of Neurosurgery, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  4. 04
    Alper SL6 papers · 2026

    Division of Nephrology and Vascular Biology Research Center, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02215, USA.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  5. 05
    Jin SC6 papers · 2026

    Department of Genetics, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO 63110, USA.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  6. 06
    Mehta NH6 papers · 2026

    Department of Pathology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  7. 07
    Haider S5 papers · 2026

    School of Pharmacy, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UK.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  8. 08
    Mekbib KY5 papers · 2026

    Department of Neurosurgery, Massachusetts General Hospital & Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02114, USA.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  9. 09
    Moreno-de-Luca A5 papers · 2026

    Department of Radiology, Neuroradiology Section, Kingston Health Sciences Centre, Queen's University Faculty of Health Sciences, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  10. 10
    Dennis E4 papers · 2026

    Department of Neurosurgery, Massachusetts General Hospital & Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02114, USA.

    Papers in Europe PMC

Clinical research

Is a treatment being tested?

1

interventional trials for this specific condition

1 interventional trial matched this specific condition name; 1 currently recruiting in our sample. 119 trials are registered for hydrocephalus, the broader category — shown separately because they may or may not enrol this specific subtype.

Data as of 11 September 2026 · last trial check 28 July 2026

1 interventional trial — more than 77.2% of diseases in the trials denominator have none at all (5501 of 7126; this disease is at the 80.1th percentile).

low confidence · 80.1th percentile (trials denominator)

Recruiting interventional trials

From the matched ClinicalTrials.gov set

1 interventional trials matched after quoted-phrase search and title/condition post-filter.

Broader category: hydrocephalus

119

Interventional trials for the parent category, exclusive of NCT IDs already counted above. Eligibility for this subtype is not guaranteed.

Worth raising with a clinician. How we count trials.

Recruiting under the broader category

Other registries (secondary)

Broader net from EU CTIS, ISRCTN, and ICTRP when available — deduped against ClinicalTrials.gov IDs already counted above. Dual-model LLM relevance gates what we keep. These rows are not added to the interventional headline.

raw 13 · after dedupe 13 · already on CT.gov 0 · kept 0 · parent 0 · uncertain 13 · dropped 0 · fetched 2026-07-29

Source notes: ictrp: Error: ICTRP public search unavailable (WHO portal is SPA-only; SOAP needs partnership). Tried: https://apps.who.int/tri

No secondary-registry studies passed dual-model relevance for this condition name (after dedupe).

Uncertain / not reviewed (13)

Where to find support

Condition-specific patient organisations, when Orphanet lists them, are on the disease’s Orphanet page. We also link umbrella groups that support undiagnosed and ultra-rare families.

Orphanet entry for Congenital hydrocephalus — check Associations / patient organisations on that page.

India — NPRD

Last verified 2026-07-26

This 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 on the overview but are not added to the query string.

("Congenital hydrocephalus") OR ("LDB1" OR "LDB1 syndrome" OR "LDB1-related")

Run this search on Europe PMC

ClinicalTrials.gov query (quoted phrases + MeSH via query.cond, plus recall-expansion terms when used):

"Congenital hydrocephalus"

Interventional trials matched via: phrase (mesh = registered under a MeSH descriptor no name phrase would catch; recall-expansion = gene / selected parent terms used only for trials).

Study-type breakdown: 1 interventional · 0 observational · 0 expanded access. Only interventional studies enter the trial headline.

Parent-category trials query:

"hydrocephalus"

Query health: ok — strategies attempted: phrase; with hits: phrase

Run this search on ClinicalTrials.gov

Confidence reasoning

  • Preferred label is multi-word and distinctive
  • No synonyms dropped by stoplist
  • No label/synonym collisions with other diseases in this corpus
  • Publication count (4768) is extremely high with unknown/missing prevalence — treat as possible over-matching, not proven research intensity

Ingested 2026-07-26T19:24:31.576Z