View clinical trials related to Nerve Degeneration.
Filter by:The goal of this observational study is to investigate biomarkers and neurocognitive markers of neurodegenerative processes in obstructive sleep apnea patients. The main questions the study aims to answer are: - Does neurodegeneration assessed by neurobiological markers and neurocognitive test performance exists in obstructive sleep apnea? - Are these neurodegenerative markers are associated with the adherence to clinical prescribed positive airway pressure therapy? Newly diagnosed patients with obstructive sleep apnea will be observed during the use of clinical prescribed positive pressure therapy. Different study related investigations take place before and six months after treatment start. Researchers will compare after six months the group of adherent treatment participants with the non-adherent treatment participants group to investigate if differences in the observed neurobiological or neurocognitive parameters exist.
The purpose of this research study is to investigate how the brain, memory, thinking, and motor behavior change both in individuals with movement and/or cognitive disorders, as well as healthy individuals. Researchers will look at measurements of memory, thinking, brain wave and muscle activity, daily functioning, and brain scans to learn more about brain disorders such as Alzheimer disease and Lewy body disease.
The aim of this observational study is to answer the following questions in individuals with acute and chronic exposure to organophosphates. The main questions to be addressed are 1. What are the prognostic values of neuroinflammatory markers? 2. What are the genotoxic effects of organophosphates? 3. what are the changes occurring in the levels of traditional oxidative stress and inflammatory markers?
Neurodegenerative diseases are a major health concern due to their growing societal implications and economic costs. The identification of early markers of pathogenic mechanisms is one of the current main challenges. The gut-brain axis has become a primary target because of its transversal role across the neurodegenerative spectrum and its effect on cognition. However, despite recent progress, how changes in the gut-microbiota composition can affect the human brain is still unclear. The goal of this observational study is to characterise the gut-microbiota composition associated with alterations in brain structure and function during the ageing process and across neurodegenerative disorders. This is based on recent studies showing that changes in the human brain and in the microbiota composition, can indicate very sensitively and in a predictive way pathological development and, consequently, be used as markers of neurodegenerative diseases. The main questions it aims to answer are: - How variation in the gut-microbiota composition correlates with the normal brain ageing trajectory? - How dysregulation in the gut-microbiota correlates with pathological changes in brain regions in specific neurodegenerative disorders? - Can the impact of the gut-microbiota on the brain be modulated by blood biomarkers? The investigators will recruit 40 young healthy participants, 40 old healthy participants, 40 participants with prodromal Alzheimer's Disease, 40 participants with Parkinson's Disease and 40 participants with Multiple Sclerosis. Participants will undergo the following examinations: - Magnetic Resonance Imaging - Analysis of a stool sample - Analysis of a blood sample - Neuropsychological assessment - Questionnaires on eating habits
This clinical trial aims to demonstrate that metformin can prevent clinical disability in patients with progressive MS by stopping or slowing down neurodegeneration by enhancing endogenous remyelination. Patients will continue their DMT treatment: metformin or placebo will be used as add-on study treatment.
Excessive daytime sleepiness which still remains after an effective treatment with nocturnal ventilotherapy or with other specific treatments (positional therapy, oro-mandibular devices) in patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome has a prevalence of 55% of treated cases, representing a notable theme of clinical and research interest. In recent years there have been several studies on the use of wakefulness-promoting drugs generally prescribed in patients with narcolepsy, in this disorder with promising results. Right in consideration of the forthcoming approval of these drugs, it is important to find biomarkers able to predict which patients will develop daytime sleepiness resistant to ventilatory treatment. Several studies have highlighted the association between obstructive sleep apnea syndrome and the increase of cerebral amyloid beta deposits, concluding that apnoic disorder can be considered a risk factor for the development of cognitive impairment and Alzheimer';s disease. In this scenario, it would be useful to identify biological markers able to underline which clinical phenotypes of sleep apnea syndrome are more associated with residual excessive daytime sleepiness and/or cognitive impairment. In recent years several kits for the assay of biomarkers of neurodegeneration have been developed not only in CSF, but also in human serum. Among them, the most important are light chain neurofilaments (NFL), amyloid isoforms 40 and 42 (Ab40 and Ab42). Other biomarkers found in neurodegenerative diseases associated with excessive daytime sleepiness are orexin A (OXA) and histamine (HA). In this view, the aim of this study is to evaluate the role of biomarkers of neurodegeneration in characterizing disease severity and response to treatment of obstructive sleep apnea syndrome with residual excessive daytime sleepiness.
The English version of the "Clinical Assessment of Dysphagia in Neurodegeneration" (CADN), represents a rapid and valid clinical assessment tool for dysphagia in neurodegenerative population. Currently, there is no validated tool in Italian specific for the clinical assessment of dysphagia in neurodegenerative disease with strong psychometric characteristics. The present study aims to translate and validate the Italian version of CADN in neurodegenerative population. Psychometric properties will be measured.
Rares diseases are a heterogeneous group of conditions which need important tools for diagnosis. The use of high-throughput sequencing is able to diagnose half of the patients. For the other part it is impossible to conclude due to the presence of variants of unknown significance (VOUS). Functional analysis are needed to bring strong argument to reclassify variants as pathogenic or benign. The main objective is to evaluate the diagnosis yield of this strategy.
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic disease of the central nervous system characterised by multi-focal inflammatory and demyelinating lesions disseminated in the brain and in the spinal cord. Impressive advancements in the treatment of the autoimmune component of the disease have been achieved during the last decades, leading to a drastic reduction of white matter lesion accumulation and relapse rate along the disease course. However, the development of treatments effective for preventing or delaying the neurodegenerative component of the disease, that underly disability accrual and progression of the disease, remains a major challenge. The development of novel therapeutic strategies for neuroprotection that target all patients with MS is a priority objective for research in the next years. The critical steps towards identifying treatments that prevent neuro-axonal damage include a deep understanding of the mechanisms underlying neurodegeneration and the development of reliable biomarkers for assessing the efficacy of emerging drugs and for accelerating their translation to clinical use. The team of Prof. Stankoff has pioneered an innovative imaging approach combining positron emission tomography and MRI, and succeeded in generating individual maps or key biological processes such as endogenous remyelination, neuroinflammation, or early damage preceding lesion formation. Using these approaches, it has been shown that these mechanisms were influencing disability worsening over the disease course, but the investigators still lack long term longitudinal studies for the validation of these advanced imaging metrics as prognosis markers. Recently, preliminary results have also suggested that a multimodal combination of advanced MRI sequences may have the potential to reproduce some PET results. In this project the investigators propose to unravel the predictive value of individual maps of tremyelination, neuroinflammation, and early tissue damage, on long term disability worsening and to develop a novel imaging approach that aims to capture remyelination of lesions, ongoing inflammation invisible on T1 and T2 MRI sequences (subacute/chronic active lesions) and to predict short-term future disease activity (identify prelesional areas), from a single multimodal MRI acquisition in patients with MS.
TIRCON-reg aims to - continue the provision of a global registry and natural history study for NBIA disorders - harmonize and cover existing national and single site registries - enable participation of countries and single sites that so far have no access to an NBIA registry - join forces in order to recruit sufficient numbers of patients - define the natural history of NBIA disorders - define the most appropriate outcome measures - inform the design and facilitate the conduction of clinical trials