View clinical trials related to Dopamine.
Filter by:Dopamine is frequently used as an inotropic drug to elevate cardiac output. In addition to the beneficial cardiac effect of this drug, the few previous studies addressing its ability to alter the airway tone reported controversial results. Thus, the investigators aimed at clarifying the potential of dopamine to alter gas exchange outcomes and the airway tone in patients undergoing cardiac surgeries with cardiopulmonary bypass. Blood gas parameters, airway resistance, tissue damping and tissue elastance will be measured in the patients before the CPB, immediately after CPB, and 5 min after administration of dopamine (3 mcg/kg/min). The importance of the research is to reveal whether the beneficial mechanical changes after dopamine administrations are associated with improvements in gas exchange outcomes. Clarification of this research question have scientific relevance and may also improves patient outcomes.
Diarrhea is one of the leading causes of under-five childhood mortality and accounts for 8% of 5.4 million global under-5 deaths. The coexistence of sepsis and hypovolemic shock in children with severe acute malnutrition (SAM) having diarrhea is common. At Dhaka hospital of icddr,b, the death rate is as high as 40% and 69% in children with severe sepsis and septic shock respectively with co-morbidities such as severe malnutrition. The conventional management of SAM children with features of severe sepsis recommended by WHO includes administration of boluses of isotonic saline followed by blood transfusion in unresponsive cases with septic shock; whereas the Surviving Sepsis Campaign (SSC) guideline recommends vasoactive support. To date, no study has evaluated systematically the effects of inotrope(s) and vasopressor or blood transfusion in children with dehydrating diarrhea (for example, in cholera) and SAM having shock and unresponsive to WHO standard fluid therapy. This randomized trial will generate evidence whether inotrope and vasopressor or blood transfusion should be selected for severely malnourished children having hypotensive shock and who failed to respond to WHO standard fluid bolus.
Developing theoretical, quantitative models of the basic cognitive mechanisms underlying human social decision-making, and understanding the influence of neuromodulators such as dopamine on these mechanisms, has important ramifications for both healthy and patient populations. In this proposal the investigators combine quantitative social measures, computational models, neuroimaging, and a pharmacological intervention to define the mechanisms of social decision-making.
The dopamine agonist pramipexole has recently been suggested as a potential novel antidepressant drug. While preliminary clinical data hint at its efficacy in treating depressive symptoms, our current understanding of its impact on neurocognitive processes is relatively limited. This is in part because mechanistic studies have largely focused on the effects of single-dose treatments. However, such acute administration of dopaminergic drugs likely has different cognitive effects than the more prolonged administration that is used clinically. This study therefore aims to explore and characterise the neurocognitive effects of more prolonged pramipexole treatment. Forty healthy volunteers will be randomly allocated to 12 to 15 days of treatment with either pramipexole or placebo. Study participants as well as researchers will be blinded as to which treatment is used. Before and after treatment all participants will perform a set of psychological tasks and questionnaires evaluating reward-based learning, emotional information processing, motivational vigour and subjective experience. Furthermore, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) will be used to compare neural activity during emotion and reward processing between the two treatment groups. We hypothesises that pramipexole might enhance reward sensitivity, motivational vigour, and pleasure experience and could induce positive biases in emotional information processing.
This observational study will investigate whether differences in birth events and oxygen levels during the newborn period affects the brain activity of children during the middle childhood years.
Patients that have undergone a Fontan procedure (surgical correction for single ventricle congenital heart disease) may develop a complication known as protein-losing enteropathy (PLE). Some studies suggest PLE is primarily caused by impaired lymph flow. Use of continuous dopamine infusion can improve PLE. Evidence suggests the effect of dopamine may be through its effect on lymphatic function. This observational study looks at markers of lymph flow and PLE symptoms after treatment using dopamine and other standard therapies during disease exacerbations.
Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a technique that is emerging as a prospective therapy for neurologic, psychiatric and addictive disorders. Specifically, anodal tDCS applied over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is associated with improvement of cognitive functions and mood. Despite an increased use in clinical settings, tDCS suffers from limitations, especially regarding the strength and the duration of therapeutic effects. Strategies to optimize the conditions for tDCS application suffer from the lack of knowledge about its neurophysiological impact. Moreover, tDCS is increasingly used in private settings through commercial apparatus and tutorials to make a "do-it-yourself" device delivering tDCS now available on the Internet. This private use worries neuroscientists and health authorities. Even if the general impression is that, in controlled conditions, tDCS is safe with only mild and transient adverse effects, whether and how tDCS could be used for enhancing cognition in healthy subjects are needed to investigate in more detail. The investigators believe that a better understanding of some neurobiological effects of tDCS is crucial to further tailor tDCS for experimental and therapeutic applications and to define recommendations for a private use. As the cortex is densely connected with basal ganglia areas, including dopaminergic areas, tDCS is probably not only capable to target cortical but also subcortical structures remote from the stimulation sites. Some studies suggest that cortical stimulation by other approaches, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) leads to an increased dopaminergic transmission. The involvement of dopaminergic systems in tDCS effects has been investigated only indirectly in pharmacological studies. Thus, the direct effect of the DLPFC stimulation by tDCS on dopaminergic transmission is still unknown. The aim of this project is to reveal the online impact of a single-session of tDCS applied bilaterally over the DLPFC in healthy subjects on the dopaminergic transmission measured by PET, combined with the [11C]raclopride bolus-plus-continuous-infusion method.
Bulimia nervosa is a severe psychiatric disorder characterized by recurrent binge eating episodes followed by inappropriate compensatory behavior to prevent weight gain such as self-induced vomiting. With this project, the investigators want to investigate the role of the neurotransmitter dopamine in bulimia nervosa. Dopamine is reported to have an important influence on the neural reward system and is involved in the processing of gains and losses. The reward system is functionally connected to the individual perception of rewards in the environment. A previous study revealed that under catecholamine depletion including dopamine depletion women suffering from bulimia nervosa in their past reported mild bulimic symptoms and their reward processing became dysfunctional: their ability to use rewarding stimuli for task solving was diminished. The aim of this study is to investigate the role of reduced dopamine availability in the development or maintaining of bulimia nervosa and in the dysfunctional processing of rewarding stimuli and negative visual information. Therefore, the investigators hypothesize that catecholamine depletion achieved by oral administration of alpha-methyl-paratyrosine (AMPT) will induce mild bulimic symptoms in females suffering from bulimia nervosa in their past. In addition, they will reveal dysfunctions in reward and emotional processing under catecholamine depletion. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, the investigators propose that a reduced activation of the nucleus accumbens, a neural structure of the reward system, will be the neural correlate of this dysfunctional reward processing. Furthermore, the amygdala, a neural structure that is involved in emotional processing, will show a higher activation under catecholamine depletion. Genetic factors additionally have an influence on the dopaminergic system. Therefore, the investigators hypothesize that genetic factors, for example the COMT val-158-met polymorphism may have an effect on the behavioral and neural response to catecholamine depletion. In sum, this investigation may help to understand which changes in reward and emotional processing may lead to a reoccurrence of bulimic symptoms. In future, the findings of this study may help to develop individual pharmacological and psychotherapeutical interventions to enhance the outcome of treatment.