ORPHA:576074
Middle East respiratory syndrome
Also known as: MERS
Publications
57,093
Trials
10
Interventional, condition-specific
Researchers
1,465
Distinct authors in sample
Gene link
—
Readiness
2/6
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.
Cross-references
Joined from Mondo / Orphanet. MeSH labels may enter searches; UMLS / OMIM / NCIT are stored for reference.
- MONDO:0100116
- UMLS:C3694279
- NCIT:C128424
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.”
2/6 stages with a signal
An interventional trial matched this condition name on ClinicalTrials.gov — see trials below.
- Gene identifiedNot found
No GenCC disease–gene assertion in this build
- LiteraturePresent
57,093 matched papers (54,261 in last 10 years) Source
- Phenotype characterisedNot checked
Not yet enriched from Monarch / HPO
- Animal modelNot checked
Not yet enriched from Monarch / Alliance
- Orphan designationNot checked
FDA/EMA orphan-drug designation not enriched yet
- 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)
Not enriched in this build — Monarch phenotype joins were not run for this record.
Animal models (Monarch / Alliance)
Not enriched in this build.
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=5449) is 41.
57,093 papers since the earliest indexed year in this search — median last-10-year count for a rare disease in this dataset is 41 (publications denominator n=5449).
54,261 in the last 10 years · low confidence
Phrase hits: 57,093 · MeSH hits: 0
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.
- 01Weiss SR7 papers · 2026
Department of Microbiology, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104.
Papers in Europe PMC - 02Drosten 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 - 03
- 04Li Y6 papers · 2026
Guangzhou National Laboratory, Guangzhou International Bio-Island, Guangzhou, 510005, China. li_yaxin@gzlab.ac.cn.
Papers in Europe PMC - 05Liu 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 - 06Cohen 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 - 07Müller 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 - 08Peiris M5 papers · 2026
School of Public Health, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China.
Papers in Europe PMC - 09Wang X5 papers · 2026
The Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Protein Science, Beijing 100084, China.
Papers in Europe PMC - 10Wang 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 27 July 2026
10 interventional trials — more than 73% of diseases in the trials denominator have none at all (5114 of 7003; this disease is at the 91.7th percentile).
low confidence · 91.7th 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.
Where to find support
We do not yet link condition-specific patient organisations. These umbrella groups support undiagnosed and ultra-rare families:
India — NPRD
Last verified 2026-07-26This 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"
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