View clinical trials related to Calcinosis.
Filter by:The purpose of the study is to evaluate the effects of two phosphate binders, PhosLo and sevelamer, on heart calcification in dialysis patients. The study will use a non-invasive technique, electron beam computed tomography (CT) scanning, to measure calcium in the coronary arteries, the aortic valve, and the mitral valve.
The purpose of this study is to determine if supplemental vitamin K will reduce age-related bone loss in elderly men and women above that achieved by supplementation.
OBJECTIVES: I. Determine whether intermittent, long-term, subcutaneous administration of calcitonin increases phosphaturia, reduces hyperphosphatemia, and increases intact parathyroid hormone levels in patients with tumoral calcinosis. II. Determine whether calcitonin reduces or prevents tumor recurrence. III. Determine whether hyperphosphatemia abolishes the normal circadian pattern of serum phosphorus. IV. Determine how repetitive calcitonin administration alters the biochemical markers of bone metabolism in osteopenic patients with tumoral calcinosis.
Electron beam computed tomography (EBCT) has been regarded as the state-of-the-art investigation for detecting and quantitating coronary artery calcification. However, EBCT is expensive, and the asymmetric gantry geometry makes it less useful for routine scanning; thus, EBCT is not readily available to the general population. Recent reports have shown that "volumetric" (also known as "helical" or "spiral") scanners, which are much more commonly available than EBCT, can detect coronary artery calcifications. Updated software available to the NIH which will allow for EKG gating of volumetric scans should improve the quality of the images, and thus improve the ability to accurately quantitate coronary calcification by volumetric scanners. We would like to compare the results of volumetric scans with that of standard EBCT in order to characterize similarities and differences between the two scanning techniques. We propose to obtain EBCT and volumetric CT scans of the coronary arteries in a group of patients with known or suspected coronary artery disease and to calculate the calcium score by each method. Our primary analysis will be a comparison of the sensitivities of the two methods.