View clinical trials related to Motor Neuron Disease.
Filter by:Background: SBMA is an inherited chronic disease. It affects males in mid to late adulthood. It causes slowly progressive weakness of muscles and hand tremors. Researchers want to learn more about the effects of SBMA. Objective: To identify measurements that change over time in SBMA, including tests of muscle strength and function, as well as measurements of muscle and fat size. Eligibility: Men over the age of 18 both with and without a history of SBMA. Design: Participants will have a medical history, physical exam, and blood and urine tests. They will have neuromuscular ultrasound. They will have a lumbar puncture to obtain spinal fluid. For this, a needle will be inserted into the spinal canal in the lower back. Participants will have muscle strength and function tests. These tests may include pushing, pulling, rising from a chair and sitting back down, and/or walking. During these tests, they may wear an accelerometer (activity tracker) on their wrist. Participants will get an activity tracker to wear on their wrist for 10 days at home every 3 months. Participants with SBMA will also have lower limb magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and optional whole-body MRI. They will have lung function tests. They will have speech and swallow tests. They will complete questionnaires. They may have optional body scans to measure bone density and lean body mass. They may have optional muscle biopsies. For biopsies, a needle will be used to take a small piece of muscle from the leg. Participants with SBMA will have 5 study visits over 2 years (every 6 months). Participants without SBMA will have 1 study visit.
The purpose of this study is to assess the effect of reldesemtiv versus placebo on functional outcomes in ALS.
The primary objective of the study is to evaluate the feasibility of eliciting continuous narrative speech in different neurodegenerative and psychiatric indications, using remote, self-administered speech tasks, as measured by the average length of speech elicitation for each speech task during the first week of self-assessment. Secondary objectives include (1) evaluating the reliability of speech tasks in the remote self-administered setting, as measured by the intra- and inter-subject variance; (2) accessing the adherence of speech tasks in this setting, as measured by the subject average fraction of days during the first week, where at least one task response is submitted; (3) evaluating the feasibility of using speech tasks in the setting of a telemedicine videoconference, as measured by the average length of speech elicited in each group; (4) evaluate whether a set of acoustic and linguistic patterns can detect each indication, compare to either a control group or all other indications, as measured by the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), sensitivity, specificity and Cohen's kappa of the relevant binary classifier; (5) evaluating how the performance of such algorithms can be impacted by speaker and environment covariates, as measured by the Kendall rank correlation coefficient of the AUC of each classifier and each of age group, gender and speech-to-reverberation modulation energy ratio.
This is a Phase 1b/2a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study to evaluate the safety, tolerability, PK, and PD of intrathecal (IT) WVE-004 in adult patients with C9orf72-associated ALS or FTD. To participate in the study, patients must have a documented mutation (GGGGCC [G4C2] repeat expansion) in the first intronic region of the C9orf72 gene and be diagnosed with ALS or FTD.
The purpose of this observational study is to improve understanding of the biology of why ALS, MS and FTD have different effects on different people and facilitate better measurement of the disease in future drug testing. To do this, brain and spinal cord neural network functionality will be measured over time, in addition to profiling of movement and non-movement symptoms, in large groups of patients, as well as in a population-based sample of the healthy population. Patterns of dysfunction which relate to patients' diagnosis and coinciding and future symptoms which align with categories of patients with similar prognoses will be investigated and their ability to predict incident patients' symptoms in future will be measured.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis/ Motor Neurone Disease (ALS/MND) is a rare and invariably fatal neurological disease. ALS/MND has a terribly high burden on patients, family and carers, and carries great socioeconomic burden. Current best treatment options are expensive and attempt to control disease progression and manage symptoms while offering no cure. Better treatments are wanting. Monepantel is a well-known veterinary drug, registered as a livestock wormicide in 39 countries. The industry collaborator, PharmAust Ltd, has found that monepantel shows off-target activity, inhibiting a cellular signaling system controlled by mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR). This stops cancer growth and reduces protein accumulation in diseased cells. PharmAust has already tested monepantel in humans and pet dogs in Phase I and II anti-cancer clinical trials, respectively, in Australia. Data from these trials show that monepantel treatment associates with an exceptionally high safety profile, mTOR signaling inhibition and anticancer activity. Abnormal protein accumulation within motor neurons of the brain associates with the cause of ALS/MND. Inhibition of the mTOR signaling pathway slows disease progression in certain preclinical models of ALS/MND and is suggested to provide synergy with the ALS/MND standard-of-care drug, riluzole. An alternative mTOR inhibitor, rapamycin, is currently the subject of an ALS/MND clinical trial in humans investigating control of disease progression. Monepantel has a different structure to rapamycin and an apparently better safety profile. This Phase I Clinical Trial hypothesis is that monepantel administration to individuals living with ALS/MND will safely reduce disease associated protein accumulation in motor neurons and provide therapeutic benefit. To test this hypothesis, the safety and tolerability of oral monepantel administration and markers of efficacy will be tested in individuals living with ALS/MND in a dose escalating Phase I/II Clinical Trial. To mitigate risk, only patients with sporadic and certain known familial types of ALS will be eligible. To further mitigate risk, the monepantel starting dose will be reduced a calculated five-fold compared to that already used in human cancer patients and already demonstrated to be safe and effective as an mTOR inhibitor. Dependent upon incremental outcomes, three higher doses may then be tested, each for minimally 28 days with a duration at the optimal dose of at least six months.
The investigators propose a longitudinal home study of ALS patients to measure the severity of speech and swallowing (bulbar) impairment via a smartphone-based, remote speech and swallow assessment (rSSA). The study is designed to assess the feasibility and validity of such a monitoring intervention. Furthermore, it is proposed that regular monitoring of these two bulbar processes may shed light on their co-evolution over the course of ALS.
Abstract: Context/background: people affected by Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) see their own life totally disturbed after the diagnosis. This disease also courses, apart from the functional and depressing worsening, with internal damage manifested by a cardio respiratory deterioration. There are not many clinical studies publications about this disease given that is considered a weird illness with short prognosis. Objectives: to examine the effects of the inspiratory muscle training (IMT) on respiratory muscle strength, heart rate variability (HRV), quality of life and mood in patients with ALS. Methods: 20 volunteer patients, male and female, with ALS, bulbar or spinal will take part of the cuasi-experimental study and they will be divided into two groups: an experimental group (n = 10) and a control group (n = 10). The Maximum Inspiratory Pressure (PIM), the HRV, the quality of life and mood will be measured. The participants of experimental group will conduct 30 inspirations per day, 15 in the morning and 15 in the evening, 5 days per week, through 8 weeks. The resistance of the training in the experimental group will be increase acording to the PIM measured at the first visit. During the first week, the resistance will be at 30% of PImax, weeks 2 and 3 at 40%, weeks 4 and 5 at 50% and the last 3 weeks at 60%. After 8 weeks, all participants will fill up again all scales and post training measurements will be taken.
A multi-center registration study of clinical characteristics of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients with traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).
ActiSLA is a monocentric academic study. Patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis may be included on a voluntary basis. The investigators plan to include a group of approximately 20 patients with ALS. The investigators have planned to assess patient every three months for a year. On each visit, participants will undergo a clinical examination with MRC sum score and Ashworth scores. They will perform few tests ( 6-minutes walk test (6MWT), dynamometric measure, electromyography, Edinburgh Cognitive and Behavioural ALS Screen ) and will answer to some questionaires (dysphagia handicap scale, ALS-SFR-r). After each visit, participants will wear Actimyo for one month daily.