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ORPHA:600

Vocal cord and pharyngeal distal myopathy

low confidenceDisorder

Also known as: Distal myopathy with vocal cord weakness · MATR3-related distal myopathy · VCPDM

Publications

1,781

Trials

0

Interventional, condition-specific

Researchers

334

Distinct authors in sample

Gene link

MATR3

Definitive

Readiness

4/6

Stages with a signal

Clinical definition (Orphanet)

Vocal cord and pharyngeal distal (VCPDM) is a rare distal characterized by adult onset of muscle weakness in the feet and hands (slowly progressing to involve proximal limb muscles) combined with vocal or swallowing dysfunction and frequent respiratory muscle involvement in later stages. Normal to mildly elevated creatine kinase (CK) serum levels and rimmed-vacuolated dystrophic muscle fiber changes are associated laboratory and pathologic findings.

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 specific-condition interventional trial, but broader-category trials exist — discuss eligibility with a clinician.

  1. Gene identifiedPresent

    Definitive — MATR3

  2. LiteraturePresent

    1,781 matched papers (1,407 in last 10 years) Source

  3. Phenotype characterisedPresent

    30 HPO annotations (e.g. Dysarthria; Bulbar palsy; Hyperreflexia) 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 trialPartial

    None under the specific name; 4 for broader category distal myopathy

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?

Yes — we know a specific gene responsible (MATR3).

GenCC classification: Definitive.

Phenotypes (Monarch / HPO)

30

Associated phenotypes · MONDO:0018951

  • Dysarthria
  • Bulbar palsy
  • Hyperreflexia
  • Weak voice
  • Dysphagia

Showing 5 of 30 — 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?

1,781

1,781 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.

1,781 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).

1,407 in the last 10 years · low confidence

Phrase hits: 42 · MeSH hits: 0

Open Europe PMC search

Who's working on it?

334

Distinct author names in 42 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
    Zierz S4 papers · 2020

    Department of Neurology, Martin-Luther-University of Halle-Wittenberg, 06120 Halle (Saale), Germany.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  2. 02
    Beckmann JS3 papers · 2009
    Papers in Europe PMC
  3. 03
    Jackson CE3 papers · 2009
    Papers in Europe PMC
  4. 04
    Kraya T3 papers · 2020

    Department of Neurology, Martin-Luther-University of Halle-Wittenberg, Halle (Saale), Germany.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  5. 05
    Mensch A3 papers · 2020

    Department of Neurology, Martin-Luther-University of Halle-Wittenberg, 06120 Halle (Saale), Germany.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  6. 06
    Seboun E3 papers · 2009
    Papers in Europe PMC
  7. 07
    Senderek J3 papers · 2014

    Institute of Cell Biology, ETH Zürich, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland. jan.senderek@cell.biol.ethz.ch

    Papers in Europe PMC
  8. 08
    Weis J3 papers · 2020

    Institute of Neuropathology, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  9. 09
    Ando Y2 papers · 2019

    Department of Neurology, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kumamoto University, 1-1-1 Honjo, Kumamoto, 860-8556 Japan.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  10. 10
    Feit H2 papers · 2009

    Department of Neurology, Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit, Michigan, USA.

    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). 4 trials are registered for distal myopathy, the broader category — shown separately because they may or may not enrol this specific subtype.

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.

4 interventional trials matched distal myopathy, the broader category — listed below. Those studies are not counted in the condition-specific total.

Broader category: distal myopathy

4

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.

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 Vocal cord and pharyngeal distal myopathy — 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.

("Vocal cord and pharyngeal distal myopathy" OR "Distal myopathy with vocal cord weakness" OR "MATR3-related distal myopathy" OR "VCPDM") OR ("MATR3" OR "MATR3 syndrome" OR "MATR3-related")

Run this search on Europe PMC

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

"Vocal cord and pharyngeal distal myopathy" OR "Distal myopathy with vocal cord weakness" OR "MATR3-related distal myopathy" OR "VCPDM"

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

Parent-category trials query:

"distal myopathy"

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

Run this search on ClinicalTrials.gov

Confidence reasoning

  • Preferred label is multi-word and distinctive
  • No synonyms dropped by stoplist
  • No label/synonym collisions with other diseases in this corpus
  • Publication count (1781) is implausibly high for prevalence class "<1 / 1 000 000" — treat as possible over-matching, not a measure of research intensity

Ingested 2026-07-26T14:30:35.134Z