View clinical trials related to Autistic Disorder.
Filter by:The goal of this project is to test an intervention program for caregivers and their young children with autism that is focused on improving social communication. This study specifically targets underserved populations, specifically children from low SES and racial/ethnic minority families. Participants will include 40 children (aged 24 months to 60 months) and their caregivers who will be randomized (as if by flipping a coin) to one of the two treatments: Parent education sessions for two hours a week for 12 weeks or parent-child intervention sessions with the child for one hour, twice a week for 12 weeks. Young children with autism have difficulty with engaging in joint attention with others (e.g. pointing, showing. Joint attention skills are important to later development of language. Therefore, targeting this problem in young children may result in better language outcomes for these children. In order to examine the effects of the interventions, all participants will be complete cognitive, language, communication and play-based assessments prior to treatment, at the end of the first 12 weeks of the intervention, and post-treatment immediately following the intervention (approximately 2.5 to 3 hours each).
Early connections has two broad goals: - to identify risk indices for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in 6 to 24 month old infants who have an older sibling with ASD or infants who have an older neurotypical sibling. - to assess whether it is possible to alter risk processes through early intervention with high-risk infants, thereby reducing social-communication delays or the severity of autism symptoms.
This is an open-label extension study available only to subjects who completed an earlier double-blind, placebo-controlled study of sapropterin in children with autism.
Autism is defined as a lifelong pervasive developmental disability, as such, symptom recovery is considered rare. Reports by Lovaas and McEachin, Smith & Lovaas and more recently by Cohen, Amerine-Dickens, & Smith, Smith Groen et al. and Sutera Pandey et al suggest that intensive behavioral intervention programs during preschool years may result in improvement to the point where some children no longer meet criteria for autism by the time they reach school age. Similarly, there are a large number of anecdotal reports of children with autism who, following intensive biomedical intervention (e.g., gluten/casein free diets, vitamin supplements, chelation), are indistinguishable from their typically developing peers. The goal of the current research is to characterize the behavioral and biological profiles of children with autism who show significant symptom reduction such that they no longer meet criteria for autism (Remitted Autism [REM-AUT]) and to contrast them with a group of children who continue to meet criteria for autism (AUT) and to typically developing (TD) group of children. Examining whether neurobiological and neurobehavioral symptoms commonly reported in autism are as frequent and severe in children who have responded to treatment is an important first step in determining what factors may contribute to symptom remission in autism. In addition, understanding how children with remitted autism compare to typically developing children will help us better understand whether symptom improvement is through remediation (normalization of function) or compensation (achieving the same behavioral/adaptive outcome but through an alternative process).
Antifungal therapy is widely used for individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The current investigation will examine the effects of fluconazole on behavioral functioning among children with ASD. This is a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study of oral fluconazole in children who meet criteria for ASD. Pre- and post-treatment behavioral ratings will be used to evaluate the efficacy of fluconazole therapy. In addition, children will undergo comprehensive medical history, physical examination, and laboratory analyses. Our objective is to quantify differences in behavioral functioning between the fluconazole treatment and a placebo. Our primary hypothesis is that, on average and relative to the placebo, children with ASD who receive fluconazole will show greater improvements in symptoms of autism.
The purpose of this study is to see if children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) will tolerate an acupressure and acupuncture intervention twice weekly over a 3 month period of time that targets regulatory and behavioral functions. It is anticipated that: 1) children with ASD will tolerate acupressure and, when properly prepared, acupuncture; 2) parents and children will attend bi-weekly appointments over a 3 month period; 3) parents will find administered acupressure technique beneficial to their child and the parent/child relationship; 4) parents will report lower levels of stress regarding their parenting experience. In addition, we will learn information about specific child regulatory and behavior functions (including sleep and attention) from parent and teacher reports while the child receives acupressure and/or acupuncture. A small clinical trial will be conducted with 50 eligible children (3-10 years of age) with ASD (and one parent each) who will be enrolled into two groups: Phase 1 pre-pilot group of 10 children who will complete 8 weeks of treatment to help develop a treatment protocol; Phase 2 with 40 children treated for 12 weeks. Parents and teachers will complete pre-intern and post surveys, and children who do not tolerate acupressure/acupuncture will be counted as "treatment failures" for analyses.
The purpose of this study is to determine if liquid supplemental melatonin is an effective treatment for children with autism who have sleep problems related to insomnia (difficulty falling asleep).
This study will develop and test a treatment aimed at reducing anxiety in social situations for children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders.
Previously it has been shown that Familial Encephalopathy with neuroserpin inclusion bodies (FENIB) patients develop abnormalities that partially overlap with Autism Spectrum disorders (ASD), confounded with additional features that could be explained by inclusion body formation not expected in subjects with inclusion body forming SERPINI1 mutations. There is no described human neuroserpin deficiency phenotype. The neuroserpin knockout mouse phenotype also suggests a possible overlap with autism. Neuroserpin could contribute directly at the synapse or through altered neuron migration during early development leading to the "underconnectivity" that underlies autism by potentially contributing to the excess of short connections and not enough long ones seen in autistic brains, possibly due to an imbalance in pruning of neurons and synapses early in life. It is thus proposed to sequence the neuroserpin gene in initially 20, and subsequently up to 100 idiopathic autistic patients selected as having the language impairment and perseveration endophenotypes.
The behavioral patterns, neurocognitive and social impairments, and high heritability are the common characteristics of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), the two most common early-onset neuropsychiatric disorders. Little is known about the discriminative validity between these two disorders. As brain imaging studies have been recognized as an important biological tool to validate disease involving the brain, no studies have employed this approach to distinguish the brain functioning between ASD and ADHD. Moreover, there is lack of comprehensive data of environmental, behavioral, neurocognitive, neuroimaging, and genetic data for healthy children. Hence, we propose this program project involving expertise researchers in the fields of child psychiatry and psychology, psychiatric genetics, and brain imaging studies to elucidate the neuropathophysiology and genes & environment interactions of ASD and ADHD as comparing to healthy controls by integrating data from environments, behavioral phenotypes, endophenotypes, and genotypes in one study.