Rare diseases · Sign or symptom
Insomnia
Difficulty staying or falling asleep
HP:0100785
What it means
Persistent difficulty in starting or maintaining sleep, or waking up earlier than desired, despite having adequate opportunities and conditions for sleep.
The individual subjectively reports the inability to sleep, which may manifest as prolonged sleep latency, frequent awakenings, or premature morning awakening. This phenomenon is often linked or associated with distress, reduced daytime functioning, or dissatisfaction with sleep.
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 this32
Very common80–99%
5Common30–79%
11- African trypanosomiasis
- Cushing syndrome due to ectopic ACTH secretion
- Epilepsy with eyelid myoclonia
- Essential thrombocythemia
- Inherited Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
- Intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy
- Mercury poisoning
- NMDA receptor encephalitis
- Pediatric-onset Graves disease
- Serotonin syndrome
- Williams syndrome
Sometimes5–29%
15- Acute intermittent porphyria
- Autosomal recessive spastic paraplegia type 77
- Buerger disease
- Citrullinemia type II
- Cortical dysgenesis with pontocerebellar hypoplasia due to TUBB3 mutation
- Hemorrhagic fever-renal syndrome
- Huntington disease
- Hyperammonemia due to N-acetylglutamate synthase deficiency
and 7 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: Inability to sleep
Tracking symptoms like this for someone? Eleplan keeps symptoms, diagnoses, medications and every specialist in one plan.
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.