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ORPHA:576074

Middle East respiratory syndrome

low confidenceDisorder

Also known as: MERS

Publications

57,093

Trials

10

Interventional, condition-specific

Researchers

1,465

Distinct authors in sample

Gene link

—

Readiness

4/6

Stages with a signal

Clinical definition (Orphanet)

A rare infectious disease caused by Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS‐CoV) and characterized by a spectrum of illness, ranging from mild upper respiratory symptoms to rapidly lower respiratory infection/pneumonia potentially leading to acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), multi-system organ failure, and death. Presenting signs and symptoms typically include fever, cough, shortness of breath, chills, dyspnea, myalgia, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.

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)

camel flu

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

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

    57,093 matched papers (54,261 in last 10 years) Source

  3. Phenotype characterisedNot found

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

  4. Animal modelPresent

    14 genotype models (Mus musculus) Source

  5. Orphan designationPartial

    1 EMA designation (none yet with FDA orphan-indication approval) — e.g. interferon alfa-n3 Source

  6. Interventional trialPresent

    10 matched on ClinicalTrials.gov

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)

14

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)

1

Designation · no FDA orphan-indication approval yet

  • EMA interferon alfa-n3Treatment of Middle East respiratory syndrome · 11/11/2015 · PositiveEMA designation

Sources: FDA OOPD · EMA orphan designations

Open Targets candidates

3

Drugs / clinical candidates · MONDO_0100116

CTD chemicals (MyDisease.info)

No CTD chemical associations returned for this Mondo ID.

Literature

Is anyone studying this?

57,093

57,093 papers — among the better-studied rare conditions, though still a fraction of common-disease literature (breast cancer: over 700,000). Median papers in the last 10 years for a rare disease in this dataset (publications denominator n=3967) is 59.

57,093 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).

54,261 in the last 10 years · low confidence

Phrase hits: 57,093 · MeSH hits: 0

Open Europe PMC search

Who's working on it?

1,465

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
    Weiss SR7 papers · 2026

    Department of Microbiology, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  2. 02
    Drosten C6 papers · 2026

    Institute of Virology, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health, Berlin, Germany.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  3. 03
    Li X6 papers · 2026

    Ningbo No.2 Hospital, Ningbo, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  4. 04
    Li Y6 papers · 2026

    Guangzhou National Laboratory, Guangzhou International Bio-Island, Guangzhou, 510005, China. li_yaxin@gzlab.ac.cn.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  5. 05
    Liu Y6 papers · 2026

    Comprehensive AIDS Research Center, Pandemic Research Alliance Unit, Center for Infection Biology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  6. 06
    Cohen NA5 papers · 2026

    Department of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Division of Rhinology, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  7. 07
    Müller MA5 papers · 2026

    Institute of Virology, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health, Berlin, Germany.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  8. 08
    Peiris M5 papers · 2026

    School of Public Health, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  9. 09
    Wang X5 papers · 2026

    The Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Protein Science, Beijing 100084, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  10. 10
    Wang Y5 papers · 2026

    Kenneth S. Pitzer Theory Center and Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, United States.

    Papers in Europe PMC

Clinical research

Is a treatment being tested?

10

interventional trials for this specific condition

10 interventional trials matched this specific condition name; none in our sample are currently recruiting.

Data as of 11 September 2026

10 interventional trials — more than 77.2% of diseases in the trials denominator have none at all (5501 of 7126; this disease is at the 92.5th percentile).

low confidence · 92.5th percentile (trials denominator)

Recruiting interventional trials

From the matched ClinicalTrials.gov set

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

No currently recruiting studies in the matched set. Open the same 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 8 · after dedupe 8 · already on CT.gov 0 · kept 0 · parent 0 · uncertain 8 · 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 (8)

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 Middle East respiratory 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.

"Middle East respiratory syndrome" OR "camel flu"

Run this search on Europe PMC

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

"Middle East respiratory syndrome" OR "camel flu"

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: 10 interventional · 0 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: MERS

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 (57093) is implausibly high for prevalence class "<1 / 1 000 000" — treat as possible over-matching, not a measure of research intensity

Ingested 2026-07-27T18:37:34.345Z