Rare diseases · Sign or symptom
Impaired vibratory sensation
Decreased vibration sense
HP:0002495
What it means
A decrease in the ability to perceive vibration. Clinically, this is usually tested with a tuning fork which vibrates at 128 Hz and is applied to bony prominences such as the malleoli at the ankles or the metacarpal-phalangeal joints. There is a slow decay of vibration from the tuning fork. The degree of vibratory sense loss can be crudely estimated by counting the number of seconds that the examiner can perceive the vibration longer than the patient.
Impaired vibratory sensation may suggesti involvement of the posterior column-medial lemniscus pathway, which is responsible for transmitting fine touch, vibration and conscious proprioceptive information from the body to the cerebral cortex.
Rare diseases that can present with this33
Very common80–99%
6Common30–79%
15- Autosomal dominant Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease type 2A2
- Autosomal dominant Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease type 2Z
- Autosomal recessive spastic paraplegia type 20
- Autosomal recessive spastic paraplegia type 43
- Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease type 1F
- Childhood-onset autosomal recessive slowly progressive spinocerebellar ataxia
- Choreoacanthocytosis
- Distal hereditary motor neuropathy type 5
- Friedreich ataxia
- Hyperornithinemia-hyperammonemia-homocitrullinuria syndrome
- Maternal uniparental disomy of chromosome 4 syndrome
- Recessive mitochondrial ataxia syndrome
- Roussy-Lévy syndrome
- Sensory ataxic neuropathy-dysarthria-ophthalmoparesis syndrome
- Wild type ATTR amyloidosis
Sometimes5–29%
10- Abetalipoproteinemia
- Acute transverse myelitis
- Autosomal dominant spastic paraplegia type 29
- Autosomal dominant spastic paraplegia type 3
- Autosomal recessive spastic ataxia of Charlevoix-Saguenay
- Autosomal recessive spastic paraplegia type 53
- Kjellin syndrome
- Kyphoscoliotic Ehlers-Danlos syndrome due to lysyl hydroxylase 1 deficiency
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: Decreased vibratory sense · Diminished vibratory sense · Hypopallesthesia · Impaired vibratory sense
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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.