View clinical trials related to Neurodegenerative Diseases.
Filter by:The Westlake Longevity Cohort (We-Longevity) is a prospective cohort study among centenarians, nonagenarians, senior citizens and their family members up to three generations living in Lishui, China. The primary aim of this cohort is to characterize the multi-omics molecular characteristics of healthy longevity and their dynamic trajectories. Another aim of We-Longevity is to investigate the association of dietary and lifestyle with the multi-omics molecular characteristics of healthy longevity, and to facilitate the development of personalized nutritional/lifestyle recommendation for the public.
The underlying pathophysiology following traumatic brain injury (TBI) in how different neurodegenerative conditions are developed are still unknown. Different neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative pathways have been suggested. The goal of this study is to follow-up patients that have been treated for TBI at the neurosurgical department about 10-15 years after their initial injury, in order to analyze fluid biomarkers of inflammation, injury and degeneration and associate these with structural imaging and long-term functional outcome. The investigators aim to invite about 100 patients back and perform advanced magnetic resonance imaging protocols, sample cerebrospinal fluid and blood for different bio- and inflammatory markers, study genetic modifications and associate it with outcomes being assessed through questionnaires. The investigators' hypothesis is that patients with ongoing inflammatory processes will present with more fluid biomarkers of neurodegeneration, worse clinical presentation and also more structural/atrophic signs on imaging. This will result in an increased understanding of the interplay between neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration in chronic TBI, as well as a panel of tentative biomarkers that could be used to assess level of disability following TBI and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
The study will examine the reciprocal relationships between the community, healthcare system, and personal determinants of self-management behaviors in persons with Parkinson's disease and their association with the performance of these behaviors in persons with Parkinson's Disease. In the first part of the study, data will be extracted from electronic medical records of 2500. In the second part of the study, a sub-sample of 200 participants with Parkinson's disease will be asked to answer standardized questionnaires.
It is not known what causes Parkinson's disease and what makes it worsen over time. Research conducted in the past few years has highlighted the possible role of inflammation on this process but its actual mechanisms are still obscure. In this study, the investigators aim to gain understanding on how inflammation is increased in Parkinson's disease and what are its mechanisms, by performing two Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scans using the tracer [11C]PBR28, that takes pictures of the brain highlighting the areas of inflammation, before and after the administration of a compound called Lipopolysaccharide or LPS, that is known to cause a mild degree of inflammation. The investigators will couple this study with two venous blood draws to measure the levels of circulating molecules of inflammation.
Functional neurosurgery is dedicated to modulating aberrant neural circuits associated with a wide range of neurological conditions. Recently, technological advances in MRI have permitted marked improvements in the direct visualization of neural targets, which is necessary for the accurate targeting in functional neurosurgery procedures. This research study focuses on imaging patient brains before their scheduled procedures by using a 3 tesla (T) MRI to provide higher resolution and quality brain images. The reason for this study is to assess the image quality using different MRI sequences or settings to improve the image resolution of the most common functional neurosurgery targets (e.g., subthalamic nucleus, globus pallidus, and thalamus) and compare the image quality of the brains in patients with healthy controls. Performing a preoperative MRI is standard-of-care for patients indicated for deep brain stimulation (DBS), gamma knife radiosurgery (GKRS), radiofrequency ablation (RFA), magnetic resonance-guided focused ultrasound (MRgFUS). MRI sequence parameters shown to improve the image quality of different neural structures in a recent literature review (Boutet et al. 2021) will be reproduced on the 3T MRI at Toronto Western Hospital.
The purpose of this study is to collect CSF and blood samples that can be used in future research studies to identify potential biomarkers in blood and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) collected in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) patients.
Currently, the Movement Disorders Society (MDS)-UPDRS scale remains the gold standard to document the outcomes in clinical trials for Parkinson's disease (PD). The MDS-UPDRS is far from infallible, as it is based on subjective scoring (using a rather crude ordinal score), while execution of the tests depends on clinical experience. Not surprisingly, the scale is subject to both significant intra- and inter-rater variability that are sufficiently large to mask an underlying true difference between an effective intervention and placebo. Digital biomarkers may be able to overcome the limitations of the MDS-UPDRS, as they continuously collects real-time data, during the patient's day to day activities. In this study the investigators are interested in developing algorithms to track progression of bradykinesia, gait impairment, postural sway, tremor, physical activity, sleep quality, and autonomic dysfunction (the latter being derived from e.g. skin conductance and changes in heart rate variability).
Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and Huntington's disease are common neurodegenerative diseases. Tau is a microtubule-associated protein, and aggregated tau resulting from hyperphosphorylation is a pathological feature of a group of neurodegenerative diseases known as tauopathies. The 18F-T807 (AV1451) molecular probe is a novel molecularly targeted imaging agent that exhibits high affinity and good selectivity for tau.
The prevalence of neurodegenerative diseases is expected to increase over the next years, in parallel with the aging of the world population. Therefore, it is important to identify new methods to prevent, delay or stop the neurodegenerative waterfall responsible for dementia conversion. To date, there is no fully proven pharmacological treatment for cognitive impairment and the available pharmacological treatments have limited efficacy because consist in symptomatic drugs with adverse side effects. On this point, non-pharmacological intervention may represent adjunctive therapy to medications in order to prevent or delay the onset of the cognitive deficits or dementia. Recently we evaluated the effectiveness of a computerized cognitive training (CoRe) in patients with early cognitive impairment. The main goal of the present protocol is to evaluate the efficacy of the home-based version of CoRe (Home CoRe). To this end, mild dementia or early cognitive impairment, and persons with Subjective Cognitive Impairment (SCI) are enrolled and randomly assigned to the experimental group (Home CoRe) or control group (CoRe). All patients are evaluated before (T0) and after (T1) treatment with an exhaustive neuropsychological assessment. Furthermore, follow-up visits are scheduled 6 months (T2) and 12 months (T3) after the end of the treatment.
General aim of the study is the improvement of the clinical knowledge of ultra-rare inherited metabolic and degenerative neurological diseases (prevalence less than 5:100,000) in adulthood through the systematic longitudinal collection of clinical, laboratory and instrumental data.