View clinical trials related to Dementia.
Filter by:The purpose of this study is to develop and pilot test and non-pharmacological intervention designed to prevent the occurence of aggression in persons with dementia.
The purpose of this study is to determine how safe and effective Seroquel (quetiapine fumarate) is compared to placebo (a non-drug tablet) for a period of up to 10 weeks in the treatment of agitation symptoms in nursing home or assisted care residents. PLEASE NOTE: Seroquel SR and Seroquel XR refer to the same formulation. The SR designation was changed to XR after consultation with FDA.
The primary goals of this exploratory/developmental (R21) study are to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of a MBSR intervention for caregivers of patients with dementia, and to estimate the effectiveness of program outcomes on standardized measures of perceived stress, psychological distress and caregiver burden. We will randomize 60 caregivers 1:1 to participate in: 1.) an intervention arm consisting of a MBSR program that includes 8 weeks of group instruction in mindfulness meditation techniques followed by home practice, or 2.) an active control arm consisting of a standard 8 week Community Caregiver Education and Support (CESS) program.
This study will use positron emission tomography (PET) imaging to measure a receptor in the brain that is involved in inflammation. Certain neurological disorders, possibly including frontotemporal dementia (FTD), are associated with increased inflammation in the brain. This study may help elucidate the relationship between FTD and inflammation. Patients with FTD and healthy volunteers who are 35 years of age or older may be eligible for this study. Candidates are screened with a medical history, physical examination, electrocardiogram, and blood and urine tests. Participants undergo the following procedures: - Whole body PET scan: PET uses small amounts of a radioactive chemical called a tracer that labels active areas of the brain so the activity can be seen with a special camera. The tracer used in this study is [11C]PBR28. Before starting the scan, a catheter (plastic tube) is placed in a vein in the arm to inject the tracer. Pictures are taken for 1 hour. This short scan is done to determine if [11C]PBR28 binds to the subject s receptors, since a number of people do not have binding. Subjects who have binding continue with brain PET and MRI scans, described below. - Brain PET imaging: Before starting the scan, a catheter is placed in a vein in the arm to inject the tracer,<TAB> and another catheter is placed in an artery in the wrist to obtain blood samples during the scan. The subject lies on the scanner bed. A special mask is fitted to the head and attached to the bed to help keep the person s head still during the scan so the images will be clear. An 8-minute transmission scan is done just before the tracer is injected to provide measures of the brain that are helpful in calculating information from subsequent scans. After the tracer is injected, pictures are taken for about 2.5 hours, while the subject lies still on the scanner bed. - Blood and urine tests are done the day of and the day following each PET scan. - Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI): An MRI scan is done within 1 year (before or after) of the PET scan. This procedure uses a magnetic field and radio waves to produce images of the brain. The subject lies on a table that is moved into the scanner (a tube-like device), wearing earplugs to muffle the noise of the machine during the scanning process. The test takes about 1 hour....
This study will test the effects of a medication called tolcapone on cognitive, behavioral, and language problems seen in patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Tolcapone increases the amount of dopamine, a brain chemical that may be lowered in FTD. The study will see if tolcapone can improve thinking, behavior, and language in people with FTD and will look at the effects of the drug on brain activity. Patients with FTD who are between 40 and 85 years of age may be eligible for this study. Participants will be seen as outpatients at the Columbia University Medical Center approximately one a week for 4 weeks. They take tolcapone or a placebo (a look-alike pill with no active ingredient) during study week 1. During study week 3, those who took placebo during week 1 now take tolcapone for 1 week and those who took tolcapone now take placebo. In addition, patients undergo the following tests and procedures: - Neurological tests to evaluate attention, problem-solving and memory. These tests are repeated several times during the course of the study. - Test to look for a gene that affects the amount of dopamine in the brain, using blood samples collected in a previous study. - Blood draws four times during the study. - Functional MRI (fMRI) to learn about changes in brain regions that are involved in performing tasks. For fMRI, the patient lies on a table that can slide in and out of the scanner, a narrow metal cylinder surrounded by a magnetic field. The procedure takes about 60 minutes and is performed four times over the course of the . FMRI involves taking pictures of the brain during MRI while the subject performs a task so that changes in the brain that occur during these tasks can be studied.
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the safety and efficacy of E2020 in patients with Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB).
This study will evaluate the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy in treating anxiety in older adults with dementia.
Memantine has been approved for use in Alzheimer's disease. Its mechanism of action raises questions of whether it can also be effective for non-Alzheimer's dementias such as frontotemporal dementia (FTD), which currently has no disease-modifying treatment. This is an open-label study to probe the effects of memantine in 15 outpatients diagnosed with FTD, as shown objectively by comparing PET scans performed before and after use of the medication. The specific type of PET scan, FDG-PET, allows the investigators to gauge the effects of memantine on cortical activity levels. The investigators hypothesize that subjects on memantine will show normalization of cortical metabolic activity.
The aim of this study is to discontinue antipsychotics and antidepressants, and to study its effect on Behavioural- and Psychological Symptoms in Dementia (BPSD).
Late-life depression (LLD) and cognitive impairment (CI) are significant public health problems among older adults, and their co-occurrence markedly increases disease burden and dementia risk. This highlights the importance of identifying and treating CI in LDD; however, current lack of reliable prognostic information from clinical, neuroimaging, and genetic data impedes research on targeted prevention and treatment. Two critical ways to close current knowledge gaps in predicting cognitive diagnostic outcomes of LLD involve: 1) increasing the number of diagnostic cases available to existing studies, and 2) using those studies to identify clinical, imaging, and genetic predictors that will improve future diagnosis. We intend to do both in the current proposal. We plan to study the following SPECIFIC AIMS: Aim 1: Identify baseline clinical-behavioral predictors of cognitive diagnostic outcomes in LLD. Working hypothesis: During acute LLD, CN will be associated with more frequent EOD and higher negative life stress than PCI and AD; PCI will be associated with EOD and higher frailty than CN and AD; AD will be associated with LOD, greater appetite loss, lower anxiety, and greater memory impairment than CN and PCI. Aim 2: Use multimodal neuroimaging at baseline to identify patterns associated with cognitive diagnostic outcomes in individuals with LLD. Working Hypothesis: CN will be associated with greater white matter integrity compared with PCI and AD; PCI will be associated with lower white matter integrity and network abnormalities in anterior cingulate cortex compared with CN; AD will be associated with lower hippocampal volume compared with CN and PCI. Aim 3: (exploratory): Explore interrelationships among candidate genes, cognitive diagnostic outcomes, and proposed phenotypic components relevant to LLD. Exploratory Hypotheses: 1) COMT val158met polymorphism will be associated with CN; 2) 5-HTTPRL and APOE ε2 polymorphisms will be associated with frailty; 3) genetic variation (SNPs) in TPH2 and AGTR1 will be associated with risk factors of AD: LOD, episodic memory, hippocampal volume, and appetite loss.