View clinical trials related to Thalassemia.
Filter by:The aim of this study is to evaluate the cardioprotective effect of spirulina in children with beta thalassemia.
This is a single-site, randomized, placebo-controlled, double blind phase 2b clinical trial. Patients with Thalassemia will participate in this study and will be treated with Denosumab or placebo. The effect of Denosumab on lumbar spine BMD in patients with Thalassemia Major and Osteoporosis will be evaluated as compared with control (placebo) at 12 months.
Many genetic diseases of lymphohematopoietic cells (such as sickle cell anemia, thalassemia, Diamond-Blackfan anemia, Combined Immune Deficiency (CID), Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome, chronic granulomatous disease, X-linked lymphoproliferative disease, and metabolic diseases affecting hematopoiesis) are sublethal diseases caused by mutations that adversely affect the development or function of different types of blood cells. Although pathophysiologically diverse, these genetic diseases share a similar clinical course of significant progressive morbidity, overall poor quality of life, and ultimate death from complications of the disease or its palliative treatment. Supportive care for these diseases includes chronic transfusion, iron chelation, and surgery (splenectomy or cholecystectomy) for the hemoglobinopathies; prophylactic antibiotics, intravenous immunoglobulin, and immunomodulator therapies for the immune deficiencies; and enzyme replacement injections and dietary restriction for some of the metabolic diseases. The suboptimal results of such supportive care measures have led to efforts to implement more aggressive therapeutic interventions to cure these lymphohematopoietic diseases. The most logical strategies for cure of these diseases have been either replacement of the patient's own hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) with those derived from a normal donor allogeneic bone marrow transplant (BMT) or hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT), or to genetically modify the patient's own stem cells to replace the defective gene (gene therapy).
This study will evaluate the use of reduced intensity conditioning regimen in patients with high risk hemoglobinopathy Sickle Cell and B-Thalassemia Major in combination with standard immunosuppressive medications, followed by a routine stem cell transplant in order to assess whether or not it is as effective as myeloablative high dose chemotherapy and transplant.
Sickle cell disease (SCD) is an inherited disorder with chronic multi-system manifestations affecting 100,000 individuals in the US, largely of minority origin and associated with substantial morbidity, premature mortality, individual suffering, healthcare costs and loss of productivity. Disease modifying treatments such as hydroxyurea, chronic blood transfusion and curative bone marrow transplantation are offered to patients based on physician preference and current practice informed by clinical trials. Decision aids are tools that could help translate evidence from these sources into practice by helping clinicians involve patients in making deliberate choices based on accessible information about the options available and their outcomes and to help them make decisions based on their values and preferences. The overarching goal of this project is to implement a web based decision aid individualized to patient characteristics to help patients with SCD achieve more accurate perception of risks and benefits of treatment options and make decisions in congruence with their values and preferences. Investigators will use a randomized controlled trial of the effectiveness of a web-based decision aid to give patients accurate information about risks and benefits of therapies that enable patients to make decisions based on their individual values and preferences.
The improved long-term survival of thalassemia major (TM) patients has resulted in increased focus on the ability to preserve fertility. While the association of iron toxicity with vital organ dysfunction, heart and liver, has been extensively investigated, the correlation of reproductive capacity and extent of iron overload is not well understood. Despite remarkable progress in methodology for prediction of reproductive status and intervention for preserving fertility, implementation in thalassemia is lacking. The investigators hypothesize that iron toxicity to the anterior pituitary occurring in the process of transfusional iron loading is directly associated with a decline in gonadal function. The investigators expect pituitary MRI measurements of iron deposition as well as markers of oxidative damage to correlate with the functional studies of pituitary-gonadal axis performed in this study. This cross sectional study will examine the relation of pituitary iron deposition and pituitary volume; serum iron and oxidative stress measures, liver iron concentration (LIC), cardiac iron and chelation adequacy with pituitary and gonadal reproductive hormone levels (and spermatogenesis in adult male patients), in order to better define the association of iron burden and chelation patterns with fertility potential, in thalassemia patients with iron overload. The study will assess whether the current chelation treatment regimens, in particular during the pubertal developmental age, are adequate for preserving fertility and could lead to improved chelation routines for preventing the high prevalence of compromised fertility. In addition, by utilizing state-of-the-art markers for fertility status, findings from this study may improve current methods for screening for hypogonadism and reproductive potential and allow earlier intervention. The investigators propose to examine 26-30 patients, 12 years and older, with measures of fertility potential, and correlate them to their current iron burden parameters and to the cumulative iron effect as indicated by past iron overload patterns and chelation history.
Study A536-06 is an open-label extension study for patients previously enrolled in study A536-04 (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier NCT01749540), to evaluate the long-term safety and tolerability of ACE-536 in adult patients with beta-thalassemia.
The investigators propose that patients with HbSβ-thalassemia have lower levels of hepcidin and higher levels of GDF-15 than HbSS patients during the non-crisis, "steady states." In addition, the investigators propose that when controlled for RBC transfusion, patients with HbSβ-thalassemia will have higher levels of storage iron (based on serum ferritin). Participants: Total number of subjects is 42 - 21 subjects with HbSS, and 21 subjects with HbSβ-thalassemia ). Procedures (methods): Eligible subjects with documented SCD (HbSS, HbS-β 0-thalassemia or HbS-β+-thalassemia) followed at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Comprehensive Sickle Cell Program will be evaluated in this single-center, prospective, cross-sectional study. The patients will be screened for eligibility at the time of a routine sickle cell clinic visit. Patients' data will be obtained in person at the time of evaluation and through review of their medical records. Investigators will obtain information on SCD-related clinical complications and obtain an estimate of the number of lifetime RBC transfusions. Blood samples will be obtained for laboratory tests. Plasma samples for hepcidin, growth differentiation factor 15 (GDF -15), and high-sensitivity CRP will be stored at -80 degrees Celsius until analysis. Other routine laboratory studies including complete blood count (CBC) with differential and reticulocyte count, serum iron profile and ferritin, and liver function tests will be performed at the clinical laboratories of UNC Hospitals.The subjects will have 30 ml. of blood drawn for this research study. Females of child bearing potential will have a urine pregnancy test at the time of the study.
There has been little progress for effective treatment of pain in sickle cell disease (SCD) patients. Many organizations have recognized that understanding the causes and reducing the burden of pain in SCD is critical in order to improve the quality of life in SCD patients. As patients with SCD face the challenge of living with both acute and chronic pain which is often improperly treated, our translational and interdisciplinary project aims to identify objective measures of pain sensitivity and its biochemical and genetic correlates. We hypothesize that SCD patients will have decreased tolerance to thermal and electrical stimuli.
The purpose of this study is to assess the tolerance and efficacy of mobilizing hematopoietic stem cells after a single injection of plerixafor (0.24mg/kg) in 3 adult patients (or 5, if results of the first 3 patients are not reproducible) affected by sickle cell disease.