ORPHA:672
Pallister-Hall syndrome
Also known as: Hypothalamic hamartoblastoma syndrome
Query health: suspect — Only one of 2 strategies returned hits (phrase).
Publications
884
Trials
0
Interventional, condition-specific
Researchers
1,186
Distinct authors in sample
Gene link
GLI3
Definitive
Readiness
2/6
Stages with a signal
Clinical definition (Orphanet)
Pallister-Hall syndrome (PHS), a pleiotropic malformative disorder, is characterized by hypothalamic hamartoma, pituitary dysfunction, bifid epiglottis, polydactyly, and, more rarely, renal abnormalities and genitourinary malformations.
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:0007804
- MeSH:D054975
- OMIM:146510
- UMLS:C0265220
- NCIT:C84987
Additional Mondo synonyms (5)
PHS · Pallister Hall syndrome · ano-cerebro-digital syndrome · hypothalamic hamartoblastoma syndrome · hypothalamic hamartoblastoma, hypopituitarism, imperforate anus, and postaxial polydactyly
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
No matched interventional trial; the gene is known and literature exists — preclinical or natural-history work may still be the practical next step.
- Gene identifiedPresent
Definitive — GLI3
- LiteraturePresent
884 matched papers (444 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 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?
Yes — we know a specific gene responsible (GLI3).
GenCC classification: Definitive.
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?
884
884 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=5449) is 41.
884 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).
444 in the last 10 years · low confidence
Phrase hits: 884 · MeSH hits: 0
Who's working on it?
1,186
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.
- 01Biesecker LG4 papers · 2023
Medical Genomics and Metabolic Genetics Branch, National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892-4472, USA.
Papers in Europe PMC - 02Rosenblum ND4 papers · 2025
Department of Paediatrics, Program in Developmental and Stem Cell Biology, Hospital for Sick Children, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Papers in Europe PMC - 03Bennett MF3 papers · 2023
Epilepsy Research Centre, Department of Medicine, The University of Melbourne, Austin Health, Heidelberg, VIC 3084, Australia.
Papers in Europe PMC - 04Berkovic SF3 papers · 2023
Epilepsy Research Centre, Department of Medicine, The University of Melbourne, Austin Health, Heidelberg, VIC 3084, Australia.
Papers in Europe PMC - 05Green TE3 papers · 2023
Epilepsy Research Centre, Department of Medicine, The University of Melbourne, Austin Health, Heidelberg, VIC 3084, Australia.
Papers in Europe PMC - 06Heinzen EL3 papers · 2026
Eshelman School of Pharmacy, Division of Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapeutics, and Department of Genetics, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA.
Papers in Europe PMC - 07Hildebrand MS3 papers · 2023
Epilepsy Research Centre, Department of Medicine, The University of Melbourne, Austin Health, Heidelberg, VIC 3084, Australia.
Papers in Europe PMC - 08Liu Y3 papers · 2025
State Key Laboratory of Protein and Plant Gene Research, Genome Editing Research Center, School of Life Sciences, PKU-THU Center for Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China.
Papers in Europe PMC - 09Park J3 papers · 2024
Department of Pediatrics, Inha University Hospital, Incheon, Korea.
Papers in Europe PMC - 10Rowan CJ3 papers · 2025
Department of Paediatrics, Program in Developmental and Stem Cell Biology, Hospital for Sick Children, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
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 27 July 2026
No matched interventional trials. This is true for 73% of diseases in the trials denominator (5114 of 7003). Here are the researchers publishing on it.
low confidence · 36.5th 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.
None of the matched observational studies is currently listed as recruiting.
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.
"Pallister-Hall syndrome" OR "Hypothalamic hamartoblastoma syndrome" OR "Pallister Hall syndrome" OR "ano-cerebro-digital syndrome" OR "hypothalamic hamartoblastoma, hypopituitarism, imperforate anus, and postaxial polydactyly"
ClinicalTrials.gov query (quoted phrases + MeSH via query.cond, plus recall-expansion terms when used):
"Pallister-Hall syndrome" OR "Hypothalamic hamartoblastoma syndrome" OR "Pallister Hall syndrome" OR "ano-cerebro-digital syndrome" OR "hypothalamic hamartoblastoma, hypopituitarism, imperforate anus, and postaxial polydactyly" OR "GLI3"
Recall-expansion terms: GLI3
Study-type breakdown: 0 interventional · 1 observational · 0 expanded access. Only interventional studies enter the trial headline.
Query health: suspect — strategies attempted: phrase, recall-expansion; with hits: phrase
Run this search on ClinicalTrials.gov
Synonyms dropped by stoplist: PHS
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 (884) is implausibly high for prevalence class "<1 / 1 000 000" — treat as possible over-matching, not a measure of research intensity
Ingested 2026-07-26T14:50:29.211Z