RARE DISEASERESEARCH ATLAS

ORPHA:95496

Pituitary stalk interruption syndrome

low confidenceDisorder

Also known as: Ectopic neurohypophysis · PSIS

Publications

1,496

Trials

2

Interventional, condition-specific

Researchers

1,049

Distinct authors in sample

Gene link

GPR161

Limited

Readiness

4/6

Stages with a signal

Clinical definition (Orphanet)

Pituitary stalk interruption syndrome (PSIS) is a abnormality of the pituitary that is responsible for pituitary deficiency and is usually characterized by the triad of a very thin or interrupted pituitary stalk, an ectopic (or absent) posterior pituitary (EPP) and hypoplasia or aplasia of the anterior pituitary visible on MRI. In some patients the abnormality may be limited to EPP (also called ectopic neurohypophysis) or to an interrupted pituitary stalk.

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.

Additional Mondo synonyms (2)

ectopic neurohypophysis · hypoplastic anterior pituitary, missing stalk, and ectopic posterior pituitary

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

An interventional trial matched this condition name on ClinicalTrials.gov — see trials below.

  1. Gene identifiedPresent

    Limited — GPR161

  2. LiteraturePresent

    1,496 matched papers (1,169 in last 10 years) Source

  3. Phenotype characterisedPresent

    16 HPO annotations (e.g. Cryptorchidism; Primary amenorrhea; Adrenal hypoplasia) 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

    2 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?

Possibly — only limited evidence so far for GPR161.

GenCC classification: Limited.

Phenotypes (Monarch / HPO)

16

Associated phenotypes · MONDO:0019828

  • Cryptorchidism
  • Primary amenorrhea
  • Adrenal hypoplasia
  • Diabetes insipidus
  • Intellectual disability

Showing 5 of 16 — 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?

1,496

1,496 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.

1,496 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).

1,169 in the last 10 years · low confidence

Phrase hits: 653 · MeSH hits: 0

Open Europe PMC search

Who's working on it?

1,049

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
    Wang X13 papers · 2025

    Department of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Institute of Endocrinology, Liaoning Provincial Key Laboratory of Endocrine Diseases, The First Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  2. 02
    Nie M9 papers · 2025

    Department of Endocrinology, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Beijing 100730, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  3. 03
    Wu X8 papers · 2025

    Department of Endocrinology, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing, China. Electronic address: wsheyan@vip.sina.com.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  4. 04
    Mao J7 papers · 2025

    Department of Endocrinology, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  5. 05
    Zhang J7 papers · 2025

    NHC Key Laboratory of Endocrinology, Peking Union Medical College Hospital; Department of Endocrinology, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Peking Union Medical College, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  6. 06
    Brue T5 papers · 2026

    Aix-Marseille Université, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), U1251, Marseille Medical Genetics (MMG), Marseille, France.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  7. 07
    Ji W5 papers · 2024

    Department of Endocrinology, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing 100730, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  8. 08
    Ma W5 papers · 2024

    School of Ophthalmology and Optometry, Jiangxi Medical College, Nanchang University, Nanchang, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  9. 09
    Sun B5 papers · 2024

    Department of Endocrinology, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  10. 10
    Zhang R5 papers · 2024

    Department of Endocrinology, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC

Clinical research

Is a treatment being tested?

2

interventional trials for this specific condition

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

Data as of 11 September 2026 · last trial check 28 July 2026

2 interventional trials — more than 77.2% of diseases in the trials denominator have none at all (5501 of 7126; this disease is at the 84.5th percentile).

low confidence · 84.5th percentile (trials denominator)

Recruiting interventional trials

From the matched ClinicalTrials.gov set

2 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 0 · after dedupe 0 · already on CT.gov 0 · kept 0 · parent 0 · uncertain 0 · 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).

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 Pituitary stalk interruption syndrome — 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.

("Pituitary stalk interruption syndrome" OR "Ectopic neurohypophysis" OR "hypoplastic anterior pituitary, missing stalk, and ectopic posterior pituitary") OR ("GPR161" OR "GPR161 syndrome" OR "GPR161-related")

Run this search on Europe PMC

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

"Pituitary stalk interruption syndrome" OR "Ectopic neurohypophysis" OR "hypoplastic anterior pituitary, missing stalk, and ectopic posterior pituitary"

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: 2 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: PSIS

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 (1496) is extremely high with unknown/missing prevalence — treat as possible over-matching, not proven research intensity

Ingested 2026-07-27T04:46:37.470Z