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ORPHA:91547

Relapsing fever

low confidenceDisorder

Publications

16,643

Trials

3

Interventional, condition-specific

Researchers

1,241

Distinct authors in sample

Gene link

—

Readiness

3/6

Stages with a signal

Clinical definition (Orphanet)

An infectious disease, rare in Europe, characterized by relapsing fever accompanied by headaches, vomiting and myalgia lasting 2-7 days, with afebrile intervals of up to 10 days. It is caused by bacterial species of the genus Borrelia, and transmitted by ticks (tick-borne relapsing fever; TBRF) and lice (louse-borne relapsing fever; LBRF).

How rare: How common this is has not been clearly measured.

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.”

3/6 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

    16,643 matched papers (6,455 in last 10 years) Source

  3. Phenotype characterisedPresent

    40 HPO annotations (e.g. Increased total bilirubin; Elevated circulating C-reactive protein concentration; Headache) 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 trialPresent

    3 matched on ClinicalTrials.gov (1 recruiting in sample)

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)

40

Associated phenotypes · MONDO:0019633

  • Increased total bilirubin
  • Elevated circulating C-reactive protein concentration
  • Headache
  • Vomiting
  • Fatigue

Showing 5 of 40 — 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?

16,643

16,643 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.

16,643 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).

6,455 in the last 10 years · low confidence

Phrase hits: 16,643 · MeSH hits: 384

Open Europe PMC search

Who's working on it?

1,241

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
    Lopez JE8 papers · 2026

    Department of Pediatrics, Division of Tropical Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA; Department of Molecular Virology and Microbiology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA. Electronic address: job.lopez@bcm.edu.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  2. 02
    Ibarra JA6 papers · 2026

    Laboratorio de Genética Microbiana, Departamento de Microbiología, Escuela Nacional de Ciencias Biológicas, Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Mexico City, Mexico.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  3. 03
    Baneth G5 papers · 2026

    Koret School of Veterinary Medicine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, P.O. Box 12, 7610001, Rehovot, Israel.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  4. 04
    Kneubehl AR5 papers · 2026

    Department of Pediatrics, Baylor College of Medicine, One Baylor Plaza, Houston, TX 77030, USA.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  5. 05
    Nachum-Biala Y5 papers · 2026

    Koret School of Veterinary Medicine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, P.O. Box 12, 7610001, Rehovot, Israel.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  6. 06
    Shwartz D5 papers · 2026

    Koret School of Veterinary Medicine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, P.O. Box 12, 7610001, Rehovot, Israel.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  7. 07
    Vázquez-Guerrero E5 papers · 2026

    Laboratorio de Genética Microbiana, Departamento de Microbiología, Escuela Nacional de Ciencias Biológicas, Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Mexico City, Mexico.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  8. 08
    Eisen RJ4 papers · 2026

    Division of Vector-Borne Diseases, National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Fort Collins, CO, USA.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  9. 09
    Fingerle V4 papers · 2026

    German National Reference Center for Borrelia, Bayerisches Landesamt für Gesundheit und Lebensmittelsicherheit, Oberschleißheim, Germany.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  10. 10
    Hojgaard A4 papers · 2026

    Division of Vector-Borne Diseases, National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Fort Collins, CO, USA.

    Papers in Europe PMC

Clinical research

Is a treatment being tested?

3

interventional trials for this specific condition

3 interventional trials matched this specific condition name; 1 currently recruiting in our sample.

Data as of 11 September 2026

3 interventional trials — more than 77.2% of diseases in the trials denominator have none at all (5501 of 7126; this disease is at the 86.7th percentile).

low confidence · 86.7th percentile (trials denominator)

Recruiting interventional trials

From the matched ClinicalTrials.gov set

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

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 16 · after dedupe 16 · already on CT.gov 0 · kept 0 · parent 0 · uncertain 16 · 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 (16)

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 Relapsing fever — 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.

"Relapsing fever"

Run this search on Europe PMC

MeSH descriptor terms unioned into the query: Relapsing Fever

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

"Relapsing fever"

Interventional trials matched via: both (mesh = registered under a MeSH descriptor no name phrase would catch; recall-expansion = gene / selected parent terms used only for trials).

Study-type breakdown: 3 interventional · 0 observational · 0 expanded access. Only interventional studies enter the trial headline.

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

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 (16643) is extremely high with unknown/missing prevalence — treat as possible over-matching, not proven research intensity

Ingested 2026-07-27T04:05:26.586Z