Rare diseases · Sign or symptom
Cerebral palsy
HP:0100021
What it means
Cerebral palsy describes a group of permanent disorders of the development of movement and posture, causing activity limitation, that are attributed to nonprogressive disturbances that occurred in the developing fetal or infant brain. The motor disorders of cerebral palsy are often accompanied by disturbances of sensation, perception, cognition, communication, and behavior, by epilepsy, and by secondary musculoskeletal problems.
In everyday care
Most people with this sign do not have a rare disease — it appears in common conditions far more often. These general reference pages cover the same topic:
Rare diseases that can present with this36
Very common80–99%
12Common30–79%
10Sometimes5–29%
10- Atypical teratoid rhabdoid tumor
- Autism spectrum disorder due to AUTS2 deficiency
- CNTNAP2-related developmental and epileptic encephalopathy
- Dopa-responsive dystonia due to sepiapterin reductase deficiency
- Hypocomplementemic urticarial vasculitis
- Maffucci syndrome
- Pachydermoperiostosis
- Placental insufficiency
and 2 more in this range
The range is how often this sign appears among people diagnosed with each disease — it is not a probability of having any of them. Many of these signs also occur in common, non-rare conditions. A sign on this page is a conversation to have with a clinician, not a conclusion.
Part of the broader category
Also called: Cerebral paralysis · CP
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Start free with EleplanThis page uses the Human Phenotype Ontology (2026-06-23) — Human Phenotype Ontology Consortium, hpo.jax.org. Disease associations from Orphanet (INSERM), CC BY 4.0. Content is educational and is not medical advice.