Rare diseases · Sign or symptom
Chorea
HP:0002072
What it means
Chorea (Greek for 'dance') refers to widespread arrhythmic involuntary movements of a forcible, jerky and restless fashion. It is a random-appearing sequence of one or more discrete involuntary movements or movement fragments. Movements appear random because of variability in timing, duration or location. Each movement may have a distinct start and end. However, movements may be strung together and thus may appear to flow randomly from one muscle group to another. Chorea can involve the trunk, neck, face, tongue, and extremities.
Rare diseases that can present with this72
Very common80–99%
5Common30–79%
29- Aceruloplasminemia
- Ataxia-telangiectasia-like disorder
- Autosomal spastic paraplegia type 58
- Brain-lung-thyroid syndrome
- Classic glucose transporter type 1 deficiency syndrome
- Congenital lactic acidosis, Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean type
- Familial dyskinesia and facial myokymia
- GM2 gangliosidosis, AB variant
- Huntington disease-like 3
- Huntington disease-like syndrome due to C9ORF72 expansions
- Infantile dystonia-parkinsonism
- Infantile-onset generalized dyskinesia with orofacial involvement
- Intellectual disability-hyperkinetic movement-truncal ataxia syndrome
- Juvenile Huntington disease
- Mitochondrial DNA-associated Leigh syndrome
- Nasu-Hakola disease
- Neuroferritinopathy
- PANDAS
- Paroxysmal non-kinesigenic dyskinesia
- Proximal myopathy with extrapyramidal signs
- Rheumatic fever
- Self-limited infantile epilepsy
- Spinocerebellar ataxia type 1
- Spinocerebellar ataxia type 17
- Spinocerebellar ataxia type 2
- Sydenham chorea
- Wilson disease
- X-linked creatine transporter deficiency
- X-linked dystonia-parkinsonism
Sometimes5–29%
31- 6-pyruvoyl-tetrahydropterin synthase deficiency
- Alacrimia-choreoathetosis-liver dysfunction syndrome
- Alexander disease
- Alternating hemiplegia of childhood
- Atypical pantothenate kinase-associated neurodegeneration
- CDKL5-deficiency disorder
- Childhood-onset motor and cognitive regression syndrome with extrapyramidal movement disorder
- Congenital cataracts-facial dysmorphism-neuropathy syndrome
and 23 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: Choreatic disease · Choreic movements · Choreiform movements
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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.