View clinical trials related to Anemia, Sickle Cell.
Filter by:The proposed research is designed to test the global hypothesis that inhaled corticosteroids (ICS), a therapy developed to treat asthma, will prevent vasoocclusive painful episodes in adults with Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) who wheeze, but do not meet criteria for a diagnosis of asthma. The specific aims of this proposal are 1) Conduct a feasibility study - a randomized controlled trial of ICS for adults with SCD who do not meet criteria for a diagnosis of asthma but report recurrent cough or wheezing, 2) Measure the effects of ICS on biological correlates of pulmonary inflammation (as determined by exhaled nitric oxide) and vascular injury (as determined by sVCAM) in SCD, and 3) Compare properties of traditional and Bayesian adaptive clinical trial design for therapeutic trials in SCD in preparation for designing a definitive trial of ICS. These aims have the potential to 1) change the standard of care for individuals with SCD and recurrent cough or wheeze, 2) provide insight into the pathogenesis of non-asthmatic wheezing in SCD and its response to treatment, 3) explore the suitability of innovative clinical trial designs to overcome the challenges that have hindered therapeutic innovation for SCD.
Sickle cell disease is a disorder in which red blood cells (RBCs) are abnormally shaped. This can result in painful episodes, serious infections, chronic anemia (a decrease in the number of red blood cells), and damage to body organs. Hydroxyurea therapy offers significant benefits for infants, children, and adolescents with sickle cell anemia. These include a reduction in the frequency of pain crises and acute chest syndrome (inflammation of the lungs) and an increase in hemoglobin (the oxygen-carrying protein) in the blood. Patients on hydroxyurea who receive a maximum tolerated dose (MTD) that is specific for them have greater clinical benefit than those who receive a standard lower dose. There is, however, no way currently to predict the MTD for individual patients. As such, MTD for each patient is currently determined by gradual increases in the dose over several months. This process is time-consuming, requires monthly clinic visits, and delays the benefits of hydroxyurea therapy. Our research group has come up with an equation that could be used to predict each patient's MTD using baseline clinical and laboratory measures before starting hydroxyurea treatment. The purpose of this research study is to compare the use of our equation for predicting MTD to the current standard practice of gradually increasing the hydroxyurea dose until MTD is reached. We want to see if the use of our predictive equation will allow us to achieve MTD faster and with no more side effects than with the standard practice.
This research is being done so that we can look at the safety and efficacy of deferiprone in people with sickle cell disease or other anemias. Deferiprone is a drug that removes iron from the body. We will be comparing deferiprone with deferoxamine, another drug that removes iron from the body.
The design of the study incorporates the following features: 1. This is a phase II study to determine the safety and therapeutic potential of a new transplant approach (disease-free survival, graft versus myeloma effect) and to evaluate its toxicity profile (immediate toxicity, graft-versus-host disease, graft rejection, mortality) in a patient population with severe congenital anemias. 2. The patient cohort to be studied: Those patients with severe sickle cell disease and thalassemia who have risk factors for high mortality and morbidity related to their disease 3. Transplant Conditioning Regimen - Immunosuppression without myeloablation: Patients will receive conditioning sufficient to allow donor lympho-hematopoietic engraftment without complete marrow ablation. If the graft is rejected, the patient will reconstitute autologous marrow function. We will use a combination of low dose irradiation, Alemtuzumab (Campath®), and sirolimus. 4. Peripheral blood hematopoietic progenitor cell (PBPC) transplant: An unmanipulated peripheral blood stem cell collection from a filgrastim (G-CSF) stimulated HLA-matched donor should improve the chance of engraftment because of the high stem cell dose (5 x 106/kg CD34+ cells) and the presence of donor lymphocytes. To reduce the risk of GVHD, patients will receive sirolimus before and after the transplant. The sirolimus will be tapered as necessary to minimize any graft versus host disease while still maintaining adequate chimerism.
The investigators propose that culturally aligned community-based interventions in our multi-ethnic sickle cell disease (SCD) population, augmented by task-focused communication technology, can improve self-managed adherence to hydroxyurea (HU) by decreasing barriers to use, supporting parent-youth partnerships for chronic disease self-management and reinforcing the behavior of daily medication use. Culturally aligned community health workers (CHW) are a well-established means to support chronic disease self-management by underserved families, in partnership with medical homes. CHWs can identify and address multiple barriers and reinforce developmentally appropriate self-management to help youth reach and maintain their best fetal hemoglobin (HbF) levels. However, this strategy alone may be insufficient to achieve daily HU adherence. The investigators therefore propose a feasibility trial to test the feasibility and acceptability of a structured intervention of CHW support to address existing barriers to improve HU use, augmented by daily cue-based parent and youth text message reminders, to efficiently extend CHW family support and reinforce family partnerships for self-management.
Sickle cell disease (SCD), a genetically transmitted blood disease, necessitates life-long care. In children, the disease may cause intense pain and other severe complications. Studies show that sources of stress, as well as complex psychological and intercultural issues associated with SCD, often aggravate symptoms. At Louis Mourier hospital, the treatment model used is systematic psychological and medical care. Our hypothesis is that this care is beneficial for both the children and their families as seen in improved quality of life and positive impact on medical symptoms.
Related donor stem cell transplantation using the alemtuzumab/ TBI platform has been shown to be a safe strategy to cure severe sickle cell disease. However, due to a lack of suitable donors, many patients cannot benefit from this strategy. Alternative donor sources are desperately needed to fill this gap. Nearly all patients will have a haploidentical family member who would be able to donate. The use of post transplantation cyclophosphamide has greatly improved the outcome of haploidentical stem cell transplantation. The investigators propose to combine this with alemtuzumab/TBI conditioning.
Propanolol is a beta blocker which has been found to inhibit the ability of epinephrine to upregulate sickle red cell adhesion to laminin and endothelial cells in vitro. The purpose of this pilot study is to administer one dose of propanolol to children with sickle cell disease and to measure pre and post dose red cell adhesion. The hypothesis is that a single dose of propanolol will decrease red cell adhesion to laminin and endothelial cells as compared to baseline.
Patients with sickle cell disease many have a number of systemic complications, including liver problems. Some of these liver problems lead to liver fibrosis/cirrhosis, secondary to chronic blood transfusions. The purpose of this study is to investigate FibroScan readings in patients with sickle cell disease and iron overload secondary to blood transfusions, and to correlate the FibroScan results with Ferriscan. A comparison with the results of FibroScan to patients with Sickle cell without known liver disease, who have never been on chronic transfusions and with normal liver function profiles will also be made.The primary hypothesis is that the results of FibroScan will correlate with the results of Ferriscan and liver biopsy.
NETs formation in vaso-occlusive events in sickle cell disease and the role of hydroxyurea treatment.The study hypothesis is that NETs formation by neutrophils has a role in the induction of vaso occlusive disease in blood vessels. It is possible that high leukocyte count in children with sickle cell anemia is a bad prognostic sign due to NETs formation supporting occlusion of peripheral and central blood vessels.Hydroxyurea treatment might prevent vaso occlusive syndrome not only by increasing HbF but also by decreasing neutrophil count and inhibiting NETs formation.