View clinical trials related to Pick Disease of the Brain.
Filter by:NPC is a rare, relentlessly progressive, neurological disease and associated with serious morbidity and shortened life expectancy. The purpose of this Expanded Access Program is to provide early access to arimoclomol for patients with Niemann-Pick Type C disease who, in the opinion and the clinical judgement of the treating physician, may benefit from treatment with arimoclomol. Participants will receive treatment with arimoclomol until their doctor finds it does not help them anymore, they withdraw, or the study is stopped for any reason.
Background and objects Amyloid plaques and tau protein are the landmarks of neurodegeneration in Alzheimer's disease (AD). On the other hand, it is reported that cerebral ischemia may induce amyloid plaques and tau protein accumulation. However, it was difficult to in vivo disentangle the complex and dynamic interactions between AD pathophysiology and cerebral vascular injury during the post-stroke cognitive impairment development in the past. With the advent of novel radiotracers specific to cerebral amyloid plaques and tau protein, we aim to conduct a prospective multimodal neuroimaging cohort study to investigate the contribution of vascular injury, amyloid plaque and tau protein to cognitive impairment. Subjects and methods The prospective project plans to recruit patients with vascular cognitive impairment (VCI) (Group A, n=80), Alzheimer's disease/mild cognitive impairment (MCI) (Group B, n = 120), fronto-temporal dementia (FTD) (Group C, n =30), and progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) (Group E, n = 80). In addition, another 30 healthy people will be recruited as the control group (Group D, n=30). [18F]AV45 and [18F]MNI-958(PMPBB3) PET will be done for imaging cerebral amyloid plaque and tau protein distribution, brain MRI for obtaining structural and functional information, and neuropsychological tests for cognitive performance. Cognitive evaluation will be repeated 18 months after recruitment. In addition, APOE genotyping will be performed as well. By obtaining the neuroimaging information, such as severity of white matter change and infarction, cortical and hippocampal atrophy, and SUVRs of [18F]AV-45 and [18F]MNI-958(PMPBB3) PET, the study will be able to investigate the composite influence of cerebrovascular disease and neurodegenerative pathology on the trajectory of cognitive impairment. Group comparisons will be performed using the Chi-square test, independent t test, Mann-Whitney U test, ANOVA test, and multiple linear regression, where appropriate. Anticipation In this project, we will be able to explore the distribution patterns of amyloid plaque and tau protein among dementia patients with different etiologies, and also evaluate their influence on cognition
This study investigates if electroencephalography (EEG) neurofeedback training is more beneficial than sham feedback training for the improvement of communication, anxiety, and sleep quality in individuals with aphasia. Half of the participants will receive active EEG neurofeedback sessions first, followed by sham feedback sessions in a crossover design. The other half of participants will undergo sham feedback sessions first, followed by active neurofeedback.
The primary objective is to assess the safety and tolerability of Metformin in subjects with C9orf72 amyotrophic lateral sclerosis administered for 24 weeks. The overall objective is to determine if Metformin is safe in C9orf72 ALS patients and is a potentially viable therapeutic treatment for C9-ALS that reduces repeat-associated non-canonical start codon - in DNA (non-ATG) (RAN) proteins that are produced by the C9orf72 repeat expansion mutation.
The purpose of this study is to investigate the feasibility of using repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) - a form of non-invasive brain stimulation - to improve language functioning in individuals who have the logopenic variant of primary progressive aphasia (PPA-L) - a slowly progressive impairment of language, characterized by difficulties with word-finding, sentence repetition and sentence comprehension.
The lysosomal storage disorders (LSDs) are monogenic disorders associated with inflammation affecting multiple organs, and early death. Few treatments are available that can modify the disease course, and there is an urgent need to identify new steps in pathogenesis that can be targeted therapeutically. The complement system is novel and highly plausible as a primary driver of inflammation and cellular injury in the LSDs. This study assesses the complement activation state in patients with Fabry disease (FD), Gaucher disease (GD) and Niemann-Pick disease, type C (NPC), with comparison to healthy controls. This has the potential for immense clinical benefit through targeted complement inhibition across the full spectrum of lysosomal storage disorders, in which key pathophysiological processes including the inflammatory response to lysosomally 'stored' materials are shared.
Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA) is a progressive syndrome in the family of Alzheimer's disease and related disorders involving devastating language impairments caused by selective neurodegeneration of the brain's language network. Unfortunately, there is no treatment for PPA. An exciting possibility for treatment is non-invasive repetitive transcranial brain stimulation (rTMS), which induces electric currents in degenerating brain networks, making them in some cases more efficient. Therapeutic benefits from rTMS have been demonstrated when it is applied in many sequential sessions. For example, repeated sessions of rTMS to left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) is approved by the US Food and Drug administration as a treatment for major depressive disorder. With respect to language, high frequency rTMS increases the response rate for picture naming in healthy individuals and in patients with Alzheimer's disease. Further, in a sham controlled study, Cotelli and colleagues demonstrated that in a group of 10 non-fluent PPA patients, high frequency rTMS over the left and right dlPFC improved the percent of correct responses for action naming. When rTMS was applied for five consecutive days in a sham controlled single case study, Finocchiaro and colleagues showed lasting improvements in language (up to 1 week) in a patient with non-fluent PPA. Trebbastoni and colleagues further showed the same lasting improvements in language (up to 1 week) in a patient with logopenic PPA. Recently, in a sham controlled single case study, Bereau and colleagues applied a more intense rTMS protocol for ten consecutive days and demonstrated significant linguistic improvements in a logopenic PPA patient that lasted for 1 month. These studies have contributed valuable insights into the potential use of rTMS in treating the language symptoms of PPA patients.
Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA) is an untreatable neurodegenerative disorder that disrupts language functions. Available therapies are mainly symptomatic and recently attention has been gained by new techniques that allow for noninvasive brain stimulation such as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). The primary objective of this study is to evaluate whether the application of Active tDCS (anode over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex- DLPFC with the cathode over the right supraorbital region) to the scalp during individualized language training, would improve naming abilities in the agrammatic variant of PPA (avPPA) more than use of one methodology alone. The effect of treatment on the clinical symptoms will be related to changes in brain activity (Magnetic Resonance Imaging, MRI and Functional near-infrared spectroscopy fNIRS) and in biological markers, using a multimodal approach. Finally, we will assess the long-term effects of this approach.
The protocol is organized into three Phases - In Phase I an online training program will be developed in "Care of Persons with Dementia in their Environments" (COPE) -an evidence-based bio-behavioral dementia program -using state-of-the science simulation and best online learning practices. In addition an automated approach to fidelity monitoring using computational linguistics (automatic classification programs) will be developed. In Phase II, ten long term care community-based (PACE) organizations will be randomized into two groups; 5 PACE organizations will serve as the "control" site in which staff training will be provided via the traditional high intensity face-to-face training in the COPE program. 5 PACE organizations will serve as the comparison and staff will be trained using the online COPE training program. Phase II will evaluate the whether an online training program is the same or better in improving PACE staff competency and fidelity to COPE principles and protocols compared to a high intensity face-to-face traditional form of training. In Phase III the efficacy of the COPE program on PACE participant outcomes by type of COPE training will be evaluated. Each of the PACE organizations will enroll 5 persons with dementia and their caregivers in the study. This will yield 50 family dyads (25 dyads in traditional training sites and 25 dyads in online training sites). Dyads will be followed for 4 months. Non-inferiority analysis will be used to assess whether dyads will yield the same or better outcomes regardless of how PACE staff were trained.
The specific aims of this studyare to examine the 1) feasibility; 2) acceptability; and 3) preliminary efficacy of a tailored music intervention in home-dwelling older adults with dementia suffering from sleep disruption. Sixty dyads (older adults with dementia and their caregivers) will be randomized to receive the tailored music intervention immediately or following a four week delay.