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ORPHA:363400

Progressive encephalopathy-severe neurodegeneration-lipodystrophy syndrome

low confidenceDisorder

Also known as: Celia disease · Celia encephalopathy · Severe neurodegenerative syndrome due to BSCL2 deficiency

Publications

1,502

Trials

0

Interventional, condition-specific

Researchers

56

Distinct authors in sample

Gene link

BSCL2

Strong

Readiness

4/6

Stages with a signal

Clinical definition (Orphanet)

A rare neurodegenerative disease characterized by severe (notably speech delay), psychomotor and cognitive regression (associated with variable degrees of lipodystrophy, , hypertriglyceridemia and muscular hypertrophy), and mild to severe . Patients present with gait , spasticity, tretraplegia or tetraparesis, loss of language, tremors as well as early-onset subtle myoclonic that develops into refractory tonic-clonic and other forms of as the disease progress.

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.

Orphanet entry

Cross-references

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

Additional Mondo synonyms (1)

severe neurodegenerative syndrome due to BSCL2 deficiency

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

No specific-condition interventional trial, but broader-category trials exist — discuss eligibility with a clinician.

  1. Gene identifiedPresent

    Strong — BSCL2

  2. LiteraturePresent

    1,502 matched papers (1,032 in last 10 years) Source

  3. Phenotype characterisedPresent

    56 HPO annotations (e.g. Progressive encephalopathy; Hyperinsulinemia; Insulin resistance) 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 trialPartial

    None under the specific name; 124 for broader category lipodystrophy

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 (BSCL2).

GenCC classification: Strong.

Phenotypes (Monarch / HPO)

56

Associated phenotypes · MONDO:0014402

  • Progressive encephalopathy
  • Hyperinsulinemia
  • Insulin resistance
  • Reduced subcutaneous adipose tissue
  • Progressive psychomotor deterioration

Showing 5 of 56 — 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

No drugs or clinical candidates returned for this Mondo ID on Open Targets.

CTD chemicals (MyDisease.info)

No CTD chemical associations returned for this Mondo ID.

Literature

Is anyone studying this?

1,502

1,502 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.

1,502 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).

1,032 in the last 10 years · low confidence

Phrase hits: 7 · MeSH hits: 0

Open Europe PMC search

Who's working on it?

56

Distinct author names in 7 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.

  1. 01
    Aguiar P1 paper · 2019

    Division of Nuclear Medicine, Hospital Clínico Universitario de Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  2. 02
    Ajina R1 paper · 2026

    Department of Clinical Laboratory Sciences, College of Applied Medical Sciences, King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  3. 03
    Aldriwesh MG1 paper · 2026

    Department of Clinical Laboratory Sciences, College of Applied Medical Sciences, King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  4. 04
    Alghoribi MF1 paper · 2026

    Infectious Disease Research Department, King Abdullah International Medical Research Center, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  5. 05
    Alotibi RS1 paper · 2026

    Department of Clinical Laboratory Sciences, College of Applied Medical Sciences, King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  6. 06
    Alqurainy N1 paper · 2026

    Infectious Disease Research Department, King Abdullah International Medical Research Center, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  7. 07
    Alrabiah S1 paper · 2026

    Ministry of National Guard-Health Affairs, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  8. 08
    Álvarez-Escudero J1 paper · 2019

    Anesthesia and Reanimation Department, Hospital Clínico Universitario de Santiago de Compostela, Santiago, Spain.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  9. 09
    Arafah AM1 paper · 2026

    King Abdullah International Medical Research Center, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  10. 10
    Araújo-Vilar D1 paper · 2019

    Thyroid and Metabolic Diseases Unit, Biomedical Research Institute (CIMUS)-IDIS, School of Medicine, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Santiago, Spain. david.araujo@usc.es.

    Papers in Europe PMC

Clinical research

Is a treatment being tested?

0

interventional 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). 124 trials are registered for lipodystrophy, the broader category — shown separately because they may or may not enrol this specific subtype.

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

No matched interventional trials. This is true for 77.2% of diseases in the trials denominator (5501 of 7126). Here are the researchers publishing on it.

low confidence · 38.6th percentile (trials denominator)

Recruiting interventional trials

From the matched ClinicalTrials.gov set

No interventional trial testing a treatment was found for this specific condition name on ClinicalTrials.gov.

124 interventional trials matched lipodystrophy, the broader category — listed below. Those studies are not counted in the condition-specific total.

Broader category: lipodystrophy

124

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 4 · after dedupe 4 · already on CT.gov 0 · kept 0 · parent 0 · uncertain 4 · dropped 0 · fetched 2026-07-30

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 (4)

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 Progressive encephalopathy-severe neurodegeneration-lipodystrophy syndrome — 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.

("Progressive encephalopathy-severe neurodegeneration-lipodystrophy syndrome" OR "Celia disease" OR "Celia encephalopathy" OR "Severe neurodegenerative syndrome due to BSCL2 deficiency") OR ("BSCL2" OR "BSCL2 syndrome" OR "BSCL2-related")

Run this search on Europe PMC

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

"Progressive encephalopathy-severe neurodegeneration-lipodystrophy syndrome" OR "Celia disease" OR "Celia encephalopathy" OR "Severe neurodegenerative syndrome due to BSCL2 deficiency"

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

Parent-category trials query:

"lipodystrophy"

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 (1502) is implausibly high for prevalence class "<1 / 1 000 000" — treat as possible over-matching, not a measure of research intensity

Ingested 2026-07-27T14:33:52.906Z