View clinical trials related to Cognitive Dysfunction.
Filter by:Neurocognitive disorders are still highly prevalent in the HAART era; despite a dramatic reduction in dementia cases, 15-50% of patients may develop mild or asymptomatic neurocognitive disorders (HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders, HAND). Among other hypothesis neurotoxicity of antiretrovirals has been postulated but its impact is unknown. Our hypothesis is that using drugs with reduced in vitro neurotoxicity may improve cognition in HIV-positive patients withHAND. 76 patients with HAND will be randomized to either continue their treatment or switch to emtricitabine, darunavir/cobicistat, maraviroc. Patients will be re-tested 6 months later.
This study is being conducted to assess the effect of dietary strawberry supplementation on cognition and mobility in obese middle-aged and older adults. It is hypothesized that plant compounds, present in strawberries, may improve cognition and mobility.
The project focuses on investigating problematic medication use, especially overuse of potentially addictive drugs among the elderly. The investigators aim firstly to develop and validate instruments for detecting and describing behavioral aspects and consequences of dependence on, and misuse of, prescription medication among elderly. In addition to evaluating diagnostic utility of screening instruments, the investigators aim to identify and report characteristics, risk factors and consequences of medication misuse and dependence among the elderly.
Patients assume that cognitive performance rapidly returns to baseline after anesthesia and surgery. Several studies have shown that one week after major non-cardiac surgery about 27% of patients have postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD) and 10% of patients at 3 months. Very few studies have assessed the incidence of POCD beyond 3 months. POCD significantly reduces quality of life. Identifying risk factors for POCD is important because it is associated with prolonged hospital stay, loss of independence, and premature retirement. There is an urgent need to measure and document the level of cognitive change associated with surgery with an easy to use tool, both prior to admission and after discharge. This information can be used to plan appropriate care paths and to identify or test the efficacy of potential new treatments to alter the negative trajectory.
The increase in life expectancy is associated with a gradual aging of the population so creating new needs arising from this new situation. Memory ability declines with age and memory deficits are regarded as an initial symptom of dementia of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) type, one of the most prevalent cognitive disorders in older people. States and scientific community have been called to find preventive strategies acting against the consequent physiological cognitive decline with the aim to attenuate the increase of dementia. Numerous studies have shown that polyphenolic compounds derived from multiple dietary sources, and more specifically the polyphenolic compounds found in grapes (GP), are able to attenuate the cognitive impairment and in reducing neuropathological lesions in the brain in experimental animal models for the study of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) . In recent years, several in vivo studies have shown that oral administration of polyphenols from grapes improves antioxidant status in the brain and prevents neuronal damage induced by free radicals. The intake of proanthocyanidins, especially in the monomeric form, showed to produce an improvement of cognitive function in an Alzheimer's disorder animal model. A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial was designed by the investigators with the aim to evaluate potential beneficial effects of a Vitis vinifera-based food supplement on cognitive functioning and neuropsychological status in healthy older adults aging 55-75 years. For the enrollment, mental status was evaluated through the Mini-Mental State Exam, a test able to provide quickly a screen of orientation, providing a rapid screen of recall, language, orientation, registration, attention and calculation. 111 subjects were recruited and, after obtaining the informed consent, successively randomly divided in two groups: Group 1, N = 57 to be treated for 12 weeks with Vitis vinifera extract (verum 250 mg/day); Group 2, N = 54 to be treated for 12 weeks with placebo. Cognitive functioning and neuropsychological status were evaluated at the beginning (before treatment) and a the end of treatment by using Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale (HARS) and Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status.
Postoperative Cognitive Dysfunction (POCD), is a subtle decline in cognitive function characterized by impairment of memory and reduced ability to concentrate in elderly patients exposed to general anaesthesia. This prospective study aims to compare incidence and severity of POCD in two groups of patients. Group P receiving Intravenous Propofol and Inhalational anesthetic Sevoflurane. Group D receiving Intravenous Dexmedetomidine and Inhalational anesthetic Sevoflurane, Neuropsychological Test will be performed 24 hours before surgery and on postoperative day 3 and day 7.
This study will test the preliminary efficacy of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to improve fatigue and cognition in women with a history of breast cancer and persistent fatigue.
Efforts to find treatments for AD have yielded only modest benefits, likely because longstanding AD pathological processes induce irreversible neurological compromise. These processes begin years before the onset of clinical symptoms. This possibility has been incorporated into a model describing stages of AD development, articulated by the NIA/Alzheimer's Association preclinical workgroup of which the Co-Director of the Kulynych Alzheimer's Research Center, Dr. Suzanne Craft, was a member. According to this model, the best hope for countermanding the effects of AD lies in intervening at the earliest possible point in the pathological cascade. There are several important ongoing efforts in adults with preclinical AD that directly target amyloid aggregation. Although this strategy addresses an important aspect of the AD pathological cascade, we believe that addressing metabolic dysfunction affecting glucose and insulin regulation offers a complementary approach, in that it may reduce amyloid burden and toxicity, while also directly enhancing synaptic health, brain metabolism, tau regulation and neurovascular function. The purpose of the ADCC is to identify and characterize early risk factors that predict cognitive decline and dementia in asymptomatic adults and adults with early signs of cognitive impairment. The data obtained from this study, collected at enrollment and follow-up will allow us to examine disease trajectory in individuals with and without prediabetes and other measures of glucoregulatory dysfunction in this process. The enrollees, who will be well-characterized with regard to cognitive and metabolic status through ADCC assessments, will provide an important resource for other local (institution) and national investigations. Data collected from participants enrolled in the ADCC will be stored indefinitely for future investigations.
This study aims at investigating the effects of tablet-based puzzle video games on cognitive function and emotional well-being. This study extends preliminary findings of studies looking at short-term benefits of playing puzzle video games to a long-term intervention in healthy older adults and patients suffering from cognitive impairment due to mild cognitive impairment or acquired brain injury. To this end, the investigators compare two interventions: A tablet-based puzzle video games experimental intervention and a control intervention tablet newspaper-reading control intervention. This study uses a 16-week, assessor blinded, randomized crossover design with two phases of treatment and three waves of measurement. Participants are randomly allocated to either the experimental or control intervention for 8 weeks, then interventions are crossed over. Both groups receive both interventions in opposite order. At three time points (pre-, mid- and post-test) higher cognitive function and emotional well-being are tested using standardised neuropsychological tests and questionnaires.
Because of the lengthening of life expectancy, more and more people are concerned with the effects of aging on their mental faculties (e.g., memory decline) and with the possibility of getting Alzheimer's Disease (AD) or other forms of dementia. This increasing awareness of AD has already resulted in a growing demand for neuropsychological testing. AD's research also emphasizes the need for early screening to improve the prediction of the disease progression and the efficacy of any future therapy. Such a drive to screen for pre-dementia raises the challenging issue of frontline identification of individuals in the preclinical or early clinical stages of AD. Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) is typically considered to be the prodromal state of AD, and is therefore at the core of the drive for early screening. Moreover, Pre-MCI so called SCI (Subjective Cognitive Impairment) can precede AD for 15 years. However, many individuals diagnosed with MCI do not convert to AD, some remaining stable and others even reversing back to normal (with rates of reversion to normal varying from 4.5% to as high as 53%). This over-diagnosis bias, which has been largely overlooked, is at the core of the present project at the interface of human and life sciences. Here, we argue that an important source of overdiagnosis in the prodromal state of AD comes from negative aging stereotypes (e.g., the culturally shared beliefs that aging inescapably causes severe cognitive decline and diseases such as AD) that permeate neuropsychological screening. There is ample evidence in the laboratory that such stereotypes contribute to the differences observed in the healthy population between younger and older adults in explicit memory tasks. Additionally, three pilot (lab) studies specifically conducted for the present ANR project showed that the threat of being judged stereotypically undermines the controlled use of memory of healthy older adults and simultaneously intensifies their automatic response tendencies, resulting in impaired memory performance. The present proposal goes several steps further by examining for the first time whether aging stereotypes are powerful enough to implicitly permeate the clinical neuropsychological testing and thus inflate memory deficits in older adults judged "at risk" (based on either epidemiological criteria or memory complaints), resulting in false-positive detection of SCI and MCI. This provocative hypothesis will be tested while 1) using biomarkers of neurodegeneration to distinguish false-positives from true MCI, and 2) using biomarkers of stress to examine whether and how aging stereotypes can lead to acute physiological stress during neuropsychological testing. This innovative project has the potential to offer new recommendations to improve the diagnosis accuracy of prodromal state of AD, with positive consequences for older people's wellbeing.