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ORPHA:564

Meckel syndrome

low confidenceDisorder

Also known as: Dysencephalia splanchnocystica · Meckel-Gruber syndrome

Publications

2,642

Trials

0

Interventional, condition-specific

Researchers

1,109

Distinct authors in sample

Gene link

TXNDC15

Moderate

Readiness

4/6

Stages with a signal

Clinical definition (Orphanet)

A rare, lethal, genetic, multiple anomaly disorder characterized by the triad of brain (mainly occipital encephalocele), large polycystic kidneys, and polydactyly, as well as associated abnormalities that may include cleft lip/palate, cardiac and genital anomalies, central nervous system (CNS) malformations, liver fibrosis, and bone .

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.

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 matched interventional trial, but a gene association and an animal model are on record — often described as translation-ready / stalled at the clinical step.

  1. Gene identifiedPresent

    Moderate — TXNDC15

  2. LiteraturePresent

    2,642 matched papers (1,358 in last 10 years) Source

  3. Phenotype characterisedPresent

    354 HPO annotations (e.g. Polyhydramnios; Oligohydramnios; Abnormality of the pancreas) Source

  4. Animal modelPresent

    11 genotype models (Mus musculus, Rattus norvegicus) Source

  5. Orphan designationNot found

    No FDA or EMA orphan-drug designation matched this disease via UMLS or preferred name Source

  6. Interventional trialNot found

    No matched interventional trial under our ClinicalTrials.gov rules

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?

Probably — there is moderate evidence for TXNDC15.

GenCC classification: Moderate.

Phenotypes (Monarch / HPO)

354

Associated phenotypes · MONDO:0018921

  • Polyhydramnios
  • Oligohydramnios
  • Abnormality of the pancreas
  • Pulmonary hypoplasia
  • Intestinal malrotation

Showing 5 of 354 — open Monarch for the full list.

Animal models (Monarch / Alliance)

11

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?

2,642

2,642 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.

2,642 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).

1,358 in the last 10 years · low confidence

Phrase hits: 2,510 · MeSH hits: 0

Open Europe PMC search

Who's working on it?

1,109

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
    Bergmann C5 papers · 2025

    Department of Medicine, Nephrology, University Hospital Freiburg, Germany; Medizinische Genetik Mainz, Limbach Genetics, Mainz, Germany.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  2. 02
    Liu L4 papers · 2026

    Medical Genetics Center, Maternal and Child Health Hospital of Hubei Province, Wuhan, 430070, Hubei Province, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  3. 03
    Liu Y4 papers · 2026

    Department of Biochemistry, Zunyi Medical University, Zunyi, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  4. 04
    Alkuraya FS3 papers · 2025

    Department of Translational Genomics, Center for Genomic Medicine, King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  5. 05
    Blacque OE3 papers · 2025

    UCD School of Biomolecular and Biomedical Science, UCD Conway Institute, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland. Electronic address: oliver.blacque@ucd.ie.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  6. 06
    Geipel A3 papers · 2026

    Department of Obstetrics and Prenatal Medicine, University Hospital Bonn, Venusberg-Campus 1, 53127, Bonn, Germany.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  7. 07
    Gembruch U3 papers · 2026

    Department of Obstetrics and Prenatal Medicine, University Hospital Bonn, Venusberg-Campus 1, 53127, Bonn, Germany.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  8. 08
    Johnson CA3 papers · 2025

    Leeds Institute of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  9. 09
    Kong F3 papers · 2026

    Medical Record Management Department, Maternal and Child Health Hospital of Hunan Province, Changsha, Hunan, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  10. 10
    Li X3 papers · 2024

    Tianjin Key Laboratory of Retinal Functions and Diseases, Tianjin Branch of National Clinical Research Center for Ocular Disease, Eye Institute and School of Optometry, Tianjin Medical University Eye Hospital, Tianjin 300384, China.

    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. 1 observational study did — shown below because natural-history and cohort work can be an important step toward a trial.

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.

See who's working on it — people publishing on this disease are often the practical next contact when no trial is listed.

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.

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 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 Meckel 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.

("Meckel syndrome" OR "Dysencephalia splanchnocystica" OR "Meckel-Gruber syndrome") OR ("TXNDC15" OR "TXNDC15 syndrome" OR "TXNDC15-related")

Run this search on Europe PMC

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

"Meckel syndrome" OR "Dysencephalia splanchnocystica" OR "Meckel-Gruber syndrome"

Study-type breakdown: 0 interventional · 1 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

Confidence reasoning

  • Preferred label is short or not clearly distinctive
  • No synonyms dropped by stoplist
  • No label/synonym collisions with other diseases in this corpus
  • Publication count (2642) is implausibly high for prevalence class "<1 / 1 000 000" — treat as possible over-matching, not a measure of research intensity

Ingested 2026-07-26T14:21:33.427Z