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ORPHA:90051

Sepsis in premature infants

high confidenceDisorder

Publications

201

59.4th percentile

Trials

1

Interventional, condition-specific

Researchers

1,032

Distinct authors in sample

Gene link

—

Readiness

2/6

Stages with a signal

Clinical definition (Orphanet)

A rare systemic condition affecting neonates born at less than 37 weeks gestational age and characterized by life-threatening organ dysfunction caused by a dysregulated host response to an infection, which may have been acquired shortly before or during birth (resulting in early-onset sepsis during the first 72 hours of life), or after birth (leading to late-onset sepsis between 72 hours and three months). Prematurity constitutes one of the primary risk factors for sepsis. The clinical picture may develop gradually with signs and symptoms like irritability, lethargy, or poor feeding, or progress rapidly to respiratory distress, fever, hypothermia, hypotension, shock, and multiple organ failure.

How rare: 1-5 / 10 000 — about one to five people per ten thousand (still uncommon, but less ultra-rare).

Orphanet entry

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.

  1. Gene identifiedNot found

    No GenCC disease–gene assertion in this build

  2. LiteraturePresent

    201 matched papers (118 in last 10 years) Source

  3. Phenotype characterisedNot found

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

  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 trialPresent

    1 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)

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?

201

201 papers have ever been published on this condition (under this name). For scale, breast cancer has over 700,000. Median papers in the last 10 years for a rare disease in this dataset (publications denominator n=3967) is 59.

201 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).

118 in the last 10 years · high confidence · 59.4th percentile (publications denominator)

Phrase hits: 201 · MeSH hits: 0

Open Europe PMC search

Who's working on it?

1,032

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
    Lake DE7 papers · 2023

    Department of Medicine, University of Virginia, Box 800158, Charlottesville, VA, 22901, USA, dlake@virginia.edu.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  2. 02
    Moorman JR7 papers · 2023

    Department of Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular Division, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA. rm3h@virginia.edu

    Papers in Europe PMC
  3. 03
    Sullivan BA7 papers · 2025

    Department of Pediatrics, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, VA, USA.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  4. 04
    Fairchild KD6 papers · 2025

    Department of Pediatrics, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, VA, USA.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  5. 05
    Benjamin DK Jr5 papers · 2023

    Duke Clinical Research Institute Department of Pediatrics, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  6. 06
    Underwood MA5 papers · 2019

    Department of Pediatrics, University of California Davis, Sacramento, California.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  7. 07
    Tagiev NA4 papers · 1975
    Papers in Europe PMC
  8. 08
    Zhang X4 papers · 2026

    Department of Critical Care Medicine, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  9. 09
    Berger A3 papers · 2019

    Division of Neonatology, Pediatric Intensive Care and Neuropediatrics, Department of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, Vienna, Austria.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  10. 10
    Bliss JM3 papers · 2017

    Department of Pediatrics, Women & Infants Hospital, Providence, RI, USA.

    Papers in Europe PMC

Clinical research

Is a treatment being tested?

1

interventional trials for this specific condition

1 interventional trial matched this specific condition name; none in our sample are currently recruiting.

Data as of 11 September 2026

1 interventional trial — more than 77.2% of diseases in the trials denominator have none at all (5501 of 7126; this disease is at the 80.1th percentile).

high confidence · 80.1th percentile (trials denominator)

Recruiting interventional trials

From the matched ClinicalTrials.gov set

1 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 40 · after dedupe 40 · already on CT.gov 0 · kept 0 · parent 0 · uncertain 40 · 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 (40)

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 Sepsis in premature infants — 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.

"Sepsis in premature infants"

Run this search on Europe PMC

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

"Sepsis in premature infants"

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: 1 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

Confidence reasoning

  • Preferred label is multi-word and distinctive
  • No synonyms dropped by stoplist
  • No label/synonym collisions with other diseases in this corpus

Ingested 2026-07-27T03:32:14.403Z