RARE DISEASERESEARCH ATLAS
Open navigation menu

ORPHA:466

Fatal familial insomnia

low confidenceDisorder

Also known as: FFI

Publications

2,036

Trials

0

Interventional, condition-specific

Researchers

977

Distinct authors in sample

Gene link

—

Readiness

4/6

Stages with a signal

Clinical definition (Orphanet)

A rare inherited human prion disease characterized by adult onset of disturbance and loss of circadian rhythms, dysautonomia with increased sympathetic activity, and cognitive impairment with fluctuating vigilance, impaired long-term memory, disorientation, and oneiric states. Motor disturbances include myoclonus, cerebellar , and pyramidal signs. The disease rapidly leads to a somnolent or comatose state and is typically fatal after 9 or 30 months on average (bimodal course). Neuropathologic examination shows marked neuronal loss and gliosis predominantly in thalamic nuclei and inferior olives, while deposition of abnormal prion protein may be relatively sparse.

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)

fatal familial insomnia

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 identifiedNot found

    No GenCC disease–gene assertion in this build

  2. LiteraturePresent

    2,036 matched papers (911 in last 10 years) Source

  3. Phenotype characterisedPresent

    50 HPO annotations (e.g. Dementia; Myoclonus; Abnormal autonomic nervous system physiology) Source

  4. Animal modelPresent

    2 genotype models (Mus musculus) Source

  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; 1560 for broader category insomnia

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)

50

Associated phenotypes · MONDO:0010808

  • Dementia
  • Myoclonus
  • Abnormal autonomic nervous system physiology
  • Anxiety
  • Hypertension

Showing 5 of 50 — open Monarch for the full list.

Animal models (Monarch / Alliance)

2

Model associations linked to this Mondo ID

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?

2,036

2,036 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.

2,036 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).

911 in the last 10 years · low confidence

Phrase hits: 2,036 · MeSH hits: 0

Open Europe PMC search

Who's working on it?

977

Distinct author names in 200 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
    Shi Q11 papers · 2026

    State Key Laboratory for Infectious Disease Prevention and Control, Collaborative Innovation Center for Diagnosis and Treatment of Infectious Diseases (Zhejiang University), National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing, 102206, China. shiqi76@126.com.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  2. 02
    Zerr I10 papers · 2026

    Department of Neurology, National Reference Center for CJD Surveillance University Medical Center Göttingen, 37075 Göttingen, Germany.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  3. 03
    Chen C9 papers · 2026

    State Key Laboratory for Infectious Disease Prevention and Control, Collaborative Innovation Center for Diagnosis and Treatment of Infectious Diseases (Zhejiang University), National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing, 102206, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  4. 04
    Xiao K9 papers · 2025

    State Key Laboratory for Infectious Disease Prevention and Control, Collaborative Innovation Center for Diagnosis and Treatment of Infectious Diseases (Zhejiang University), National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing, 102206, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  5. 05
    Zhou W8 papers · 2026

    State Key Laboratory for Infectious Disease Prevention and Control, Collaborative Innovation Center for Diagnosis and Treatment of Infectious Diseases (Zhejiang University), National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing, 102206, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  6. 06
    Dong XP7 papers · 2026

    State Key Laboratory for Infectious Disease Prevention and Control, Collaborative Innovation Center for Diagnosis and Treatment of Infectious Diseases (Zhejiang University), National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing, 102206, China. dongxp238@sina.com.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  7. 07
    Jackson WS7 papers · 2024

    Wallenberg Center for Molecular Medicine, Linköping University, 581 85 Linköping, Sweden.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  8. 08
    Wu L7 papers · 2025

    Department of Neurology, Xuanwu Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  9. 09
    Castilla J6 papers · 2026

    Basque Research and Technology Alliance (BRTA) - CIC BioGUNE & IKERBasque, Bizkaia, Spain.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  10. 10
    Hermann P6 papers · 2026

    Department of Neurology, University Medical Center Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.

    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). 1,560 trials are registered for insomnia, the broader category — shown separately because they may or may not enrol this specific subtype.

Data as of 26 October 2026 · last trial check 26 October 2026

No matched interventional trials. This is true for 77.2% of diseases in the trials denominator (5498 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.

1,560 interventional trials matched insomnia, the broader category — listed below. Those studies are not counted in the condition-specific total.

Broader category: insomnia

1,560

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

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 Fatal familial insomnia — 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.

"Fatal familial insomnia"

Run this search on Europe PMC

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

"Fatal familial insomnia"

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

Parent-category trials query:

"insomnia"

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

Run this search on ClinicalTrials.gov

Synonyms dropped by stoplist: FFI

Confidence reasoning

  • Preferred label is multi-word and distinctive
  • 1 synonym(s) dropped by stoplist (may under-count)
  • No label/synonym collisions with other diseases in this corpus
  • Publication count (2036) is implausibly high for prevalence class "<1 / 1 000 000" — treat as possible over-matching, not a measure of research intensity

Ingested 2026-07-26T13:55:54.814Z