Rare diseases · Sign or symptom
Irritability
Cranky
HP:0000737
What it means
An emotional state characterized by negative feelings of heightened frustration, annoyance, or feeling upset, often triggered by internal factors (e.g., fatigue, hunger, unfulfilled desires) or external factors (e.g., social or environmental challenges). Irritability may be unpredictable, and is accompanied by a lowered threshold for emotional reactivity and observable features (speech, facial expressions, or psychomotor activity).
Consider the context of the individual experience; the state of being irritable implies a change from a recognized baseline. Irritability as a trait implies an enduring feature (years) of the individual. Synonyms that could be descriptive of either positive or negative emotions (e.g. emotional overactivity) should be at a higher level in the hierarchy (e.g. Abnormal affect).
Rare diseases that can present with this120
Very common80–99%
10- Amish lethal microcephaly
- Atypical teratoid rhabdoid tumor
- Behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia
- Carnitine-acylcarnitine translocase deficiency
- CK syndrome
- Holocarboxylase synthetase deficiency
- Infantile Krabbe disease
- Nasu-Hakola disease
- Severe neurodevelopmental disorder with feeding difficulties-stereotypic hand movement-bilateral cataract
- X-linked intellectual disability-psychosis-macroorchidism syndrome
Common30–79%
54- Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis
- Adrenocortical carcinoma
- Aicardi-Goutières syndrome
- Alobar holoprosencephaly
- Angiostrongyliasis
- Aromatic L-amino acid decarboxylase deficiency
- Atypical pantothenate kinase-associated neurodegeneration
- Autoimmune limbic encephalitis
- Autosomal recessive dopa-responsive dystonia
- Benign paroxysmal torticollis of infancy
- Beta-thalassemia
- CACH syndrome
- Citrullinemia type II
- COG4-CDG
- Congenital enterovirus infection
- Congenital tufting enteropathy
- Familial colorectal cancer Type X
- Familial Mediterranean fever
- Fragile X-associated tremor/ataxia syndrome
- Gaucher disease type 2
- Glycogen storage disease due to hepatic glycogen synthase deficiency
- Hereditary arginine vasopressin deficiency
- Huntington disease
- Infantile dystonia-parkinsonism
- Infantile-onset axonal motor and sensory neuropathy-optic atrophy-neurodegenerative syndrome
- Infantile spasms-psychomotor retardation-progressive brain atrophy-basal ganglia disease syndrome
- Inherited Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
- Juvenile Huntington disease
- Kleine-Levin syndrome
- Krabbe disease
- Lennox-Gastaut syndrome
- Lobar holoprosencephaly
- Lynch syndrome
- Midline interhemispheric variant of holoprosencephaly
- Myoclonic epilepsy of infancy
- NARP syndrome
- Norrie disease
- Opsoclonus-myoclonus syndrome
- PANDAS
- Pediatric-onset Graves disease
- PFAPA syndrome
- Postorgasmic illness syndrome
- Progressive supranuclear palsy
- Pyridoxine-dependent-developmental and epileptic encephalopathy
- Rhabdoid tumor
- RNF13-related severe early-onset epileptic encephalopathy
- Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome
- Semilobar holoprosencephaly
- Serotonin syndrome
- Severe Canavan disease
- Severe X-linked mitochondrial encephalomyopathy
- Subacute sclerosing leukoencephalitis
- Sydenham chorea
- Visual snow syndrome
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: Easily annoyed · Easily bothered · Easily upset · Grumpy · Hot-temper · Irritable · Quick temper · Short fuse
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.