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ORPHA:31827

Paraquat poisoning

low confidenceDisorder

Publications

1,747

Trials

3

Interventional, condition-specific

Researchers

952

Distinct authors in sample

Gene link

—

Readiness

2/6

Stages with a signal

Clinical definition (Orphanet)

A rare intoxication with paraquat (a non-selective bipyridilium herbicide that has been banned in Europe), usually occurring through ingestion of the poison, and that presents with caustic injury of the oral cavity and pharynx, as well as nausea, vomiting, epigastric pain, lethargy, loss of consciousness and fever. Patients may develop potentially life-threatening complications such as hepatic dysfunction, acute tubular necrosis and renal insufficiency, and respiratory failure (due to pulmonary fibrosis) due to its inherent toxicity and lack of effective treatment. Intoxication via inhalation, injection and dermal or mucus contact have also been reported.

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.

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

    1,747 matched papers (708 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

    3 matched on ClinicalTrials.gov

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?

1,747

1,747 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.

1,747 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).

708 in the last 10 years · low confidence

Phrase hits: 1,747 · MeSH hits: 0

Open Europe PMC search

Who's working on it?

952

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
    Zhang Y11 papers · 2026

    Organ Transplantation Center, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, Jilin, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  2. 02
    Li Y7 papers · 2025

    Organ Transplantation Center, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, Jilin, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  3. 03
    Wang Z6 papers · 2026

    Key Laboratory of Occupational Environment and Health, Guangzhou Twelfth People's Hospital, Guangzhou 510620, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  4. 04
    YANG Y6 papers · 2026

    Emergency Department, Fuyang People's Hospital, Fuyang, 236000, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  5. 05
    Chen J5 papers · 2026

    Department of Endocrinology and Nephrology, Central Hospital of Tonghua, Tonghua 134000, Jilin Province, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  6. 06
    Gao Y5 papers · 2026

    Emergency Department, The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Medical Key Laboratory of Poisoning Diseases of Henan Province, Zhengzhou 450000, China. Electronic address: gaoyanxiazzu@163.com.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  7. 07
    Jian X5 papers · 2023

    School of Public Health, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong 250012, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  8. 08
    Liu Z5 papers · 2024

    Department of Emergency, The First Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  9. 09
    Wang M5 papers · 2025

    Department of Critical Care Medicine, Affiliated Hospital of Zunyi Medical University, Zunyi, Guizhou, People's Republic of China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  10. 10
    Chen Y4 papers · 2026

    Department of Critical Medicine, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC

Clinical research

Is a treatment being tested?

3

interventional trials for this specific condition

3 interventional trials matched this specific condition name; none in our sample are currently recruiting. 119 trials are registered for poisoning, the broader category — shown separately because they may or may not enrol this specific subtype.

Data as of 27 July 2026

3 interventional trials — more than 73% of diseases in the trials denominator have none at all (5114 of 7003; this disease is at the 85.1th percentile).

low confidence · 85.1th percentile (trials denominator)

Recruiting interventional trials

From the matched ClinicalTrials.gov set

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

No currently recruiting studies in the matched set. Open the same search on ClinicalTrials.gov.

Broader category: poisoning

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

Observational and natural-history studies

1 observational study matches 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.

None of the matched observational studies is currently listed as 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.

"Paraquat poisoning"

Run this search on Europe PMC

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

"Paraquat poisoning"

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: 3 interventional · 1 observational · 0 expanded access. Only interventional studies enter the trial headline.

Parent-category trials query:

"poisoning"

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 (1747) is extremely high with unknown/missing prevalence — treat as possible over-matching, not proven research intensity

Ingested 2026-07-26T23:30:22.799Z