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ORPHA:449266

Pleural empyema

high confidenceDisorder

Publications

3,562

89.9th percentile

Trials

19

Interventional, condition-specific

Researchers

1,199

Distinct authors in sample

Gene link

—

Readiness

3/6

Stages with a signal

Clinical definition (Orphanet)

A rare pulmonary condition characterized by accumulation of pus in the pleural cavity, most commonly as a consequence of pneumonia, but also trauma and surgical procedures. Clinical signs and symptoms depend on host factors, as well as the nature of the causative microorganism, among others, and include cough, chest pain, dyspnea, and fever.

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

Orphanet entry

Cross-references

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

Additional Mondo synonyms (2)

pleural empyema · pleural empyema (disease)

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.”

3/6 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

    3,562 matched papers (1,719 in last 10 years) Source

  3. Phenotype characterisedNot found

    No HPO disease–phenotype associations via Monarch for these Mondo IDs

  4. Animal modelNot found

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

  5. Orphan designationPartial

    1 EMA designation (none yet with FDA orphan-indication approval) — e.g. single-chain urokinase plasminogen activator Source

  6. Interventional trialPresent

    19 matched on ClinicalTrials.gov (5 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)

None returned for this Mondo ID. That often means “not linked under this ID,” not “no clinical features.”

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)

1

Designation · no FDA orphan-indication approval yet

  • EMA single-chain urokinase plasminogen activatorTreatment of pleural empyema · 16/12/2014 · PositiveEMA designation

Sources: FDA OOPD · EMA orphan designations

Open Targets candidates

3

Drugs / clinical candidates · MONDO_0018667

CTD chemicals (MyDisease.info)

No CTD chemical associations returned for this Mondo ID.

Literature

Is anyone studying this?

3,562

3,562 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.

3,562 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).

1,719 in the last 10 years · high confidence · 89.9th percentile (publications denominator)

Phrase hits: 3,544 · MeSH hits: 32

Open Europe PMC search

Who's working on it?

1,199

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
    Biancosino C4 papers · 2026

    Department of Thoracic Surgery, HELIOS Clinic Wuppertal, Witten/Herdecke University, 42283 Witten, Germany.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  2. 02
    Wójcik N4 papers · 2025

    Department of Thoracic Surgery and Transplantation, Pomeranian Medical University, Szczecin, Poland.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  3. 03
    Wojtyś ME4 papers · 2025

    Department of Thoracic Surgery and Transplantation, Pomeranian Medical University, Szczecin, Poland.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  4. 04
    Yayan J4 papers · 2026

    Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Sleep Medicine, HELIOS Clinic Wuppertal, Witten/Herdecke University, Heusnerstr. 40, 42283 Wuppertal, Germany.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  5. 05
    Aebi C3 papers · 2024

    Division of Pediatric Infectious Disease, Department of Pediatrics, Bern University Hospital, Inselspital, University of Bern, CH-3010 Bern, Switzerland.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  6. 06
    Bartenstein A3 papers · 2024

    Department of Pediatric Surgery, Bern University Hospital, Inselspital, University of Bern, CH-3010 Bern, Switzerland.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  7. 07
    Cohen JF3 papers · 2026

    Department of General Pediatrics and Pediatric Infectious Diseases, Hôpital Necker - Enfants Malades, AP-HP Centre, Université Paris Cité, Paris, France.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  8. 08
    Duppenthaler A3 papers · 2024

    Division of Pediatric Infectious Disease, Department of Pediatrics, Bern University Hospital, Inselspital, University of Bern, CH-3010 Bern, Switzerland.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  9. 09
    Faury H3 papers · 2026

    Department of Clinical Microbiology, Hôpital Necker - Enfants Malades, AP-HP Centre, Université Paris Cité, Paris, France.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  10. 10
    Flamant A3 papers · 2026

    Department of General Pediatrics and Pediatric Infectious Diseases, Hôpital Necker - Enfants Malades, AP-HP Centre, Université Paris Cité, Paris, France.

    Papers in Europe PMC

Clinical research

Is a treatment being tested?

19

interventional trials for this specific condition

19 interventional trials matched this specific condition name; 5 currently recruiting in our sample.

Data as of 11 September 2026

19 interventional trials — more than 77.2% of diseases in the trials denominator have none at all (5501 of 7126; this disease is at the 94.6th percentile).

high confidence · 94.6th percentile (trials denominator)

Recruiting interventional trials

From the matched ClinicalTrials.gov set

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

Observational and natural-history studies

7 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

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 16 · after dedupe 16 · already on CT.gov 0 · kept 0 · parent 0 · uncertain 16 · 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 (16)

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 Pleural empyema — 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.

"Pleural empyema" OR "pleural empyema (disease)"

Run this search on Europe PMC

MeSH descriptor terms unioned into the query: Empyema, Pleural

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

"Pleural empyema" OR "pleural empyema (disease)" OR "Empyema, Pleural"

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

Study-type breakdown: 19 interventional · 7 observational · 0 expanded access. Only interventional studies enter the trial headline.

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

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 2026-07-27T16:37:39.591Z