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ORPHA:54247

Posterior cortical atrophy

low confidenceDisorder

Also known as: Benson syndrome · Biparietal Alzheimer disease · PCA

Publications

2,458

Trials

7

Interventional, condition-specific

Researchers

1,200

Distinct authors in sample

Gene link

—

Readiness

3/6

Stages with a signal

Clinical definition (Orphanet)

A rare neurologic disease characterized by impairment of higher visual processing skills and other posterior cortical functions without any evidence of ocular abnormalities, relatively intact memory and language in the early stages, and atrophy of posterior brain regions.

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.

Additional Mondo synonyms (1)

biparietal Alzheimer 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

    2,458 matched papers (1,800 in last 10 years) Source

  3. Phenotype characterisedPresent

    21 HPO annotations (e.g. Visual hallucination; Abnormal rapid eye movement sleep; Speech apraxia) 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 trialPresent

    7 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)

21

Associated phenotypes · MONDO:0018899

  • Visual hallucination
  • Abnormal rapid eye movement sleep
  • Speech apraxia
  • Oculomotor apraxia
  • Anxiety

Showing 5 of 21 — 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?

2,458

2,458 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.

2,458 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).

1,800 in the last 10 years · low confidence

Phrase hits: 2,458 · MeSH hits: 0

Open Europe PMC search

Who's working on it?

1,200

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
    Putcha D15 papers · 2026

    Frontotemporal Disorders Unit and Massachusetts Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, 149 13th St, Charlestown, Boston, MA, 02129, USA. dputcha@mgh.harvard.edu.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  2. 02
    Dickerson BC14 papers · 2026

    Frontotemporal Disorders Unit and Massachusetts Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, 149 13th St, Charlestown, Boston, MA, 02129, USA.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  3. 03
    Crutch S12 papers · 2026

    Department of Neurodegenerative Disease, Dementia Research Centre, UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, UK.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  4. 04
    Josephs KA12 papers · 2025

    Department of Neurology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  5. 05
    Graff-Radford J11 papers · 2026

    Department of Neurology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  6. 06
    Rabinovici GD11 papers · 2026

    Department of Neurology, University of CA - San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, 94143, USA.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  7. 07
    Whitwell JL11 papers · 2026

    Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  8. 08
    Katsumi Y10 papers · 2026

    Frontotemporal Disorders Unit and Massachusetts Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, 149 13th St, Charlestown, Boston, MA, 02129, USA.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  9. 09
    Yong K10 papers · 2025

    Department of Neurodegenerative Disease, Dementia Research Centre, UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, UK.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  10. 10
    Machulda MM9 papers · 2025

    Department of Psychiatry and Psychology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA.

    Papers in Europe PMC

Clinical research

Is a treatment being tested?

7

interventional trials for this specific condition

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

Data as of 11 September 2026

7 interventional trials — more than 77.2% of diseases in the trials denominator have none at all (5501 of 7126; this disease is at the 90.9th percentile).

low confidence · 90.9th percentile (trials denominator)

Recruiting interventional trials

From the matched ClinicalTrials.gov set

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

Observational and natural-history studies

4 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 7 · after dedupe 7 · already on CT.gov 0 · kept 0 · parent 0 · uncertain 7 · 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).

Uncertain / not reviewed (7)

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 Posterior cortical atrophy — 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.

"Posterior cortical atrophy" OR "Benson syndrome" OR "Biparietal Alzheimer disease"

Run this search on Europe PMC

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

"Posterior cortical atrophy" OR "Benson syndrome" OR "Biparietal Alzheimer disease"

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: 7 interventional · 4 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

Synonyms dropped by stoplist: PCA

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 (2458) is extremely high with unknown/missing prevalence — treat as possible over-matching, not proven research intensity

Ingested 2026-07-27T00:55:41.194Z