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ORPHA:221083

Hemifacial spasm

high confidenceDisorder

Also known as: Facial hemispasm · Focal myoclonus of face

Publications

4,706

95.6th percentile

Trials

12

Interventional, condition-specific

Researchers

892

Distinct authors in sample

Gene link

—

Readiness

2/6

Stages with a signal

Clinical definition (Orphanet)

A rare primary myoclonus characterized by , involuntary, irregular, clonic or tonic contractions of the muscles innervated by the facial nerve (cranial nerve VII). The symptoms are typically strictly unilateral, mostly persist during sleep, and often occur in the region of the orbicularis oculi muscle first and gradually spread to other parts of the affected half of the face as the disease progresses. Both familial and acquired forms are reported.

How rare: 1-5 / 10 000 — about one to five people per ten thousand (still uncommon, but less ultra-rare).

Orphanet entry

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.”

2/6 stages with a signal

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

  1. Gene identifiedNot found

    No GenCC disease–gene assertion in this build

  2. LiteraturePresent

    4,706 matched papers (2,106 in last 10 years) Source

  3. Phenotype characterisedNot checked

    Not yet enriched from Monarch / HPO

  4. Animal modelNot checked

    Not yet enriched from Monarch / Alliance

  5. Orphan designationNot checked

    FDA/EMA orphan-drug designation not enriched yet

  6. Interventional trialPresent

    12 matched on ClinicalTrials.gov (2 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?

Not yet — the cause hasn't been pinned down in GenCC.

No strong gene–disease assertion joined for this Orphanet entity.

Phenotypes (Monarch / HPO)

Not enriched in this build — Monarch phenotype joins were not run for this record.

Animal models (Monarch / Alliance)

Not enriched in this build.

Literature

Is anyone studying this?

4,706

4,706 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=5449) is 41.

4,706 papers since the earliest indexed year in this search — median last-10-year count for a rare disease in this dataset is 41 (publications denominator n=5449).

2,106 in the last 10 years · high confidence · 95.6th percentile (publications denominator)

Phrase hits: 4,706 · MeSH hits: 0

Open Europe PMC search

Who's working on it?

892

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
    Li Y6 papers · 2026

    Department of Neurosurgery, Hebei General Hospital, Shijiazhuang , China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  2. 02
    Liu J6 papers · 2026

    Department of Neurosurgery, China-Japan Friendship Hospital, Beijing, China. Electronic address: liujiang889@126.com.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  3. 03
    Shi H6 papers · 2026

    Department of Neurosurgery, Hebei General Hospital, Shijiazhuang , China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  4. 04
    Zhang X6 papers · 2025

    Department of Neurosurgery, Cerebral Vascular Disease Research Centre, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Anhui Medical University, 678 Fu Rong Road, Hefei, 230601, Anhui Province, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  5. 05
    Liu H5 papers · 2026

    China-Japan Friendship Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  6. 06
    Wang X5 papers · 2026

    Department of Geriatric Medicine, Nanjing Pukou People's Hospital Nanjing 211800, Jiangsu, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  7. 07
    Wang Y5 papers · 2026

    Beijing Institute of Functional Neurosurgery, Xuanwu Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China; Department of Functional Neurosurgery, Xuanwu Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  8. 08
    Zhang Z5 papers · 2026

    China-Japan Friendship Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  9. 09
    Hu X4 papers · 2026

    Department of Neurology, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430000, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  10. 10
    Liu S4 papers · 2026

    Beijing Institute of Functional Neurosurgery, Xuanwu Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC

Clinical research

Is a treatment being tested?

12

interventional trials for this specific condition

12 interventional trials matched this specific condition name; 2 currently recruiting in our sample.

Data as of 27 July 2026

12 interventional trials — more than 73% of diseases in the trials denominator have none at all (5114 of 7003; this disease is at the 92.5th percentile).

high confidence · 92.5th percentile (trials denominator)

Recruiting interventional trials

From the matched ClinicalTrials.gov set

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

Observational and natural-history studies

11 observational studies match this condition. These do not test a treatment and are not counted in the interventional-trial headline, but they are genuine research: natural-history work often defines the endpoints needed for a future rare-disease trial, and families may be able to enroll.

Recruiting or not-yet-recruiting

Open the complete matched search on ClinicalTrials.gov

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 2026-07-26

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.

"Hemifacial spasm" OR "Facial hemispasm" OR "Focal myoclonus of face" OR "Focal myoclonus of the face"

Run this search on Europe PMC

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

"Hemifacial spasm" OR "Facial hemispasm" OR "Focal myoclonus of face" OR "Focal myoclonus of the face"

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: 12 interventional · 11 observational · 0 expanded access. Only interventional studies enter the trial headline.

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

Ingested 2026-07-27T09:56:11.565Z