View clinical trials related to Aging.
Filter by:Starting from December 2019, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Corona Virus-2 (SARS-COV-2) disease spread rapidly from China into the world, with about two Mio cases confirmed around the world. In Switzerland, more than 26'000 cases have been confirmed so far, and health authorities declared in March the needs for social isolation and have banned visits to hospitalized patients and to nursing home residents. Loneliness and isolation is a significant concern for the elderly patients as well as for their families that may significantly affect physical and mental health in both. SILVER aims to evaluate the role of programmed video calls with families: - on mood, anxiety, fear of death and pain perception in patients hospitalized or in nursing homes during the SARS-COV-2 pandemic. - in relieving the familiar caregiver anxiety and fear of death of others - in relieving the professional caregiver anxiety. SILVER is an international study involving both acute, rehabilitation geriatric units and nursing homes; we will enroll all the patients present in the participating centers. Patients will be allowed to chose between video and phone calls, the following dimensions will be evaluated: - Delirium risk: using the Confusion Assessment Method (CAM) - Mood: using the 5-item Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) - Anxiety: using the Clinical Anxiety Scale (GAS). - Fear of death (self and others): using the Collett-Lester scale. In parallel, health professionals and family caregivers will be evaluated for anxiety at baseline and every week after intervention set-up by the Clinical Anxiety Scale (CAS). Family caregivers will also be evaluated with the fear of death scale (sub-scale fear of death of others). Finally, to evaluate the appreciation for video call communication in patients and caregivers we will use a Likert scale.
With advancing age, adults experience increasing speech understanding difficulties in challenging situations. Currently, speech-in-noise difficulties are rehabilitated by providing hearing aids. For older normal-hearing adults, however, hearing devices do not provide much benefit since these adults do not have decreased hearing sensitivity. The goal of the "Speech Perception and High Cognitive Demand" project is to evaluate the benefit of a new auditory-cognitive training paradigm. In the present study neural (as measured by pupillometry and magnetoencephalography) and behavioral changes of speech-in-noise perception from pretest to posttest will be examined in older adults (age 65 - 85 years) assigned to one of three training groups: 1) Active Control Group: sessions of watching informational videos, 2) Auditory Training Group: sessions of auditory training listening to one of two speakers in everyday scenarios (e.g., driving directions) and needing to recall what one speaker said in the previous sentence, and 3) Auditory-cognitive training group: identical to the auditory training group, except participants will be asked to remember information from two previous sentences. Changes in speech-in-noise perception will be examined for the three groups of older adults and gains will be compared to a control group of young, normal hearing adults (18-30 years) that is not part of the clinical trial and will not undergo any training.
This study aims to assess the safety and efficacy of study drugs and supplements on clinical (structural and functional) signs of aging and to explore/identify other possible biological measures of aging.
The "ARECOVID" project is a comprehensive sociological study of what is being played out in organizational terms in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Through quantitative methods (questionnaires) and qualitative methods (semi-directive interviews), we would understand the essential views of the populations concerned by COVID-19, but also that of actors taking care of vulnerable elderly non-COVID. Special attention will be paid to the care pathway of elderly people with and without the virus, in a health system in full reorganization. We will try to understand the needs and experiences of all health actors (hospital/city) involved in COVID-19 and the experience of confinement and the Covid-19 of the elderly living at home, in order to reflect on a possible improvement in the health response of elderly people in the event of an epidemic health crisis.
Sarcopenia, which refers to the progressive loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength, shares many characteristics with other disease states typically associated with risks of falling and fracture, including osteoporosis, frailty, and obesity. Sarcopenia often is linked to an increase in connective tissue, muscle steatosis, impaired muscle metabolism, an increase in inflammatory markers (e.g., TNF-a and IL-6), an increased stiffness of myofibers, slower kinetics in establishing myosin-actin crossing bridges, increased oxidative stress, mitochondria dysfunction, hormonal imbalance, and decreased capillary flow. In addition to the Lactobacillus casei strain, Shirota is a well-known probiotic strain that has been approved and is generally recognized as safe by the United States Food and Drug Administration. L. casei strain Shirota (LCS) has been suggested to confer health benefits. Investigators found that LCS decelerated age-related muscle loss via ensuring mitochondrial function in Senescence-Accelerated Mouse Prone 8 (SAMP8) mice. Investigators also found that 3-Indolepropionic Acid (IPA) is a microbiota-derived metabolite from a healthy intestinal gut. IPA is also a protective factor for the progression of chronic kidney disease in the Chinese population. This clinical trial focuses on the effect of fermented milk containing LCS on sarcopenia in elderly Taiwanese individuals. Investigators focus on the topic of the interaction of LCS with the diversity of the gut microbiota, microbiota-derived metabolites, and protein utilization. The proposal will have four research goals. First, investigators try to investigate whether long term supplementation LCS could restructure the gut microbiota composition and gut microbial metabolites to against Aging related -Gut Dysbiosis in elderly. Second, investigators also try to link the LCS play an important role on muscle loss and alternation of gut microbiota composition. Third, investigators try to study the LCS effect of muscle deterioration with aging, and highlight the two underpinning mechanisms (ROS and protein utilization) regulating declines in muscle mass and function. Fourth, Since IPA is important Microbiota-derived metabolites in health gut, investigators try to investigate whether LCS could play an important role on modulation of IPA production in GI. Fifth, investigators hope that investigators can through gut microbiota composition found some selective microbiota clusters perform positively correlation with IPA.
The social and health challenges of the aging population have led to the recommendation of active aging programs to increase the number of healthy and independent elderly people. These interventions have been shown to offer benefits in terms of quality of life, wellbeing, dietary and physical exercise habits, and cultural and social activity. However, there is a current need to investigate more-effective alternative means to disseminate these interventions beyond in-person formats such as serious videogames, aimed at promoting behavioral changes and providing education for purposes such as health or learning. The main objective of this project is to improve on a videogame intervention for the promotion of aging and to evaluate its efficacy via a randomized controlled trial. It is expected that after the intervention and in the follow-ups (at 3, 6, and 12 months), participants in the videogame arm of the study will have higher health status compared to the control group subjects. The first months of the study will be devoted to revising the materials and fine-tuning the intervention tested in a previous pilot study. After that, the randomized controlled trial will be conducted. Participants will be recruited through clinics and health care centers in the Autonomous Community of Galicia (Spain). To participate in the study, participants must: (a) be at least 45 years old, (b) have normal cognitive functioning, and (c) reside in Galicia. Participants will be excluded if they: (a) have serious mental or medical disorders; (b) have been receiving psychological or psychopharmacological treatment during the two months prior to the study or are participating in other studies related to active aging; and finally, (c) do not have the appropriate devices to play the game, cannot communicate in Spanish, or have problems that make it impossible to play the videogame. Information on various sociodemographic and clinical variables will be collected during the pre-intervention evaluation. The main outcome will be perceived health status, as evaluated using the SF-36 health questionnaire. A total of 574 participants will be randomly assigned to a cognitive-behavioral intervention administered through a serious online interactive multimedia game with a complementary App (CBI-V, experimental group) or to a control group that will receive information on active aging in an online format (CG). The randomization sequence will be generated automatically by the evaluation platform (concealment or blinding of randomization), and the participants in the CBI-V group will be given access to the first module of the intervention, while those in the CG will receive the first informational module. The participants in both groups will then complete the next seven modules for each condition. After the intervention, the participants will be evaluated in the postintervention assessment and follow-up assessments at 3, 6 and 12 months. In terms of its impact, this study will contribute to the development and rigorous evaluation of the worlds first psychological intervention to promote active aging managed through an interactive online multimedia videogame with a complementary app. In addition, confirmation of the programs clinical validity will be of great relevance in terms of health, social and economic benefits.
Muscle and strength begin to noticeably decline around 50 years of age, increasing an individual's risk for disease and disability. Although changes in muscle mass ultimately depend on the balance of muscle protein synthesis (MPS) and breakdown (MPB) of muscle proteins, the latter remains relatively constant with aging. Accordingly, interventions that increase rates of MPS may combat long-term decrements in skeletal muscle mass and function. Previous research has established that an optimal diet to maintain muscle mass in elderly individuals requires relatively large amounts of high-quality protein to be consumed at each meal of the day. While this is a seemingly simple strategy, there are some barriers to increasing protein feeding in elderly individuals, particularly the cost of high-quality protein and, sometimes, difficulty with chewing/swallowing. Moreover, older adults often do not wish to consume large portions of protein in one meal. Milk is a readily accessible, affordable and nutritious source of nutrient-dense high-quality protein. Consuming milk with each meal is an easy strategy to promote the maintenance of skeletal muscle mass with aging. There is also evidence suggesting that a higher fat content of milk can have a beneficial role in stimulating the MPS response to feeding, but there are insufficient data to recommend this strategy to elderly individuals. The primary aim is to measure the rates of MPS in response to controlled diets providing whole milk, fat-free milk, or a control supplement (almond beverage - often marketed as an 'alternative' to milk) with each meal. All diets will provide equal amounts of energy, but the dairy interventions will provide more protein, reflecting the amount of protein provided by each beverage. The investigators hypothesize that rates of MPS will be highest in the whole milk group but that fat-free milk will still elicit a greater MPS than almond beverage. The investigators will conduct the comparison of beverages under habitual physical activity levels and under a brief period of increased physical activity (i.e., increased daily steps). Thus, the investigators will be able to determine whether MPS responses to the experimental beverages are increased in combination with physical activity. The results will provide evidence regarding the effectiveness of daily milk ingestion for the maintenance of muscle in the elderly, increasing the marketability of milk, and potentially whole milk.
This study aims to investigate if protein supplementation increases the benefits of exercise training in the elderly with sarcopenic obesity undergoing caloric restriction.
Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is associated with an increased cardiovascular mortality. In particular children with early-onset CKD have a lifelong increased risk to suffer from cardiovascular disease (CVD). Therefore, children with CKD deserve our attention. The immune system in children with CKD is disturbed, exhibiting pro-inflammatory features. Therefore, we aim to learn more about the characteristics of the immune system in early-onset CKD. In this project PBMC of pediatric CKD patients and age-matched healthy controls will be analysed and compared using CITE-Seq as a multimodal scRNAseq phenotyping method. All patients will be clinically characterized to integrate cardiovascular and immunological data.
Older patients are more prone to adverse cognitive outcomes such as postoperative delirium (POD) and postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD). Both conditions are associated with an increased risk of death, functional decline, and health care costs. The presence of pro-inflammatory cytokines in the central nervous system has detrimental effects on the regulation of neurotransmitter signaling in different areas of the brain, especially the hippocampus, ultimately resulting in neuronal dysfunction and cognitive decline. Neuroimaging studies have provided important information on the structural and functional networks involved in the pathogenesis of POD and POCD. Strong evidence has shown a decrease in the integrity of the default mode network (DMN), along a continuum from normal aging to mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease. Dexmedetomidine is a highly selective alpha-2 adrenergic agonist with sedative and analgesic properties but minimal respiratory effects. Several studies have shown that dexmedetomidine reduces serum pro-inflammatory cytokines and POCD. The expected results are to analyze the change in the integrity of the DMN from the preoperative period to the first weeks after discharge given by the two anesthetic strategies (SEVO vs SEVODEX). In addition, it seeks to evaluate (1) Changes in the integrity of the DMN at 3 months. (2) Modulation of structural changes in white matter integrity as measured by DTI. (3) Patient performance in specific cognitive function tests and serum inflammation biomarkers between the pre- and postoperative period. For the analysis, the Generalized Linear Model (GLM) will be used, in which the integrity of the DMN is the dependent variable. As predictors will use the anesthetic groups (SEVO and SEVODEX) and the measurement time (preoperative, 1 to 3 weeks after discharge and 3 months later as levels). With this work we aim to provide a mechanistic explanation of the observed neuroprotective effects of dexmedetomidine in anesthesia protocols for elderly patients. Furthermore, this work will possibly promote functional connectivity as a possible clinical biomarker of cognitive impairment in this vulnerable population.