View clinical trials related to Schizophrenia.
Filter by:Introduction: In spite of recent advances in schizophrenia treatment, 30% of patients still do not respond properly to antipsychotic therapy. These patients are considered treatment-resistant or refractory, and the best choice for them is clozapine. However, even supported by the literature as the best known antipsychotic in terms of efficacy and rates of response, a considerable number of patients will still not respond to this treatment, remaining symptomatic and dysfunctional. These patients are classified as super-refractory (clozapine-resistent). In these cases, augmenting strategies are necessary, and some have been in use: typical and atypical antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, antidepressants and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Some studies have favored ECT, but no definitive conclusion has been drawn. Objective: Test the electroconvulsive therapy efficacy and safety as augmenting strategy to clozapine-resistant patients, as compared to placebo (sham ECT). Methods: This is a pilot double blind, placebo controlled and randomized study to assess electroconvulsive therapy efficacy as augmenting strategy to clozapine in super-refractory schizophrenia. The ECT treatment will be delivered with either a MECTA SPECTRUM 5000Q or 4000Q device, and the procedure is under general anesthesia and monitorization, after informed consent. The Hospital will follow national protocols and regulations on ECT. Sham ECT consists in habitual patient preparation and sedation, without stimulation. Patients that fit inclusion criteria will have their clozapine blood levels dosed and undergo structured assessments at baseline, after 6 treatments and at the end of the cycle of 12 ECT sessions (thrice a week protocol). The assessments will be based on CGI (Clinical Global Impression) and PANSS (Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale) scales. All medication will be maintained, except lithium carbonate.
The aim of the study is to assess the efficiency of SenseCam® in patients with schizophrenia by comparing two cognitive remediation methods of autobiographical memory.Patients and control participants will be invited to carry SenseCam® during 7 hours per day minimum and for 4 successive days. Each ending day when carry SenseCam®, they will be asked to go to the laboratory where 4 types of interventions will be successively done according to the randomization: 1) a simple visual retrospective procedure (SVR), 2) a visual retrospective procedure coupled with a specific cueing intervention (VR-SC), 3) a verbal retrospective (VbR) and 4) no intervention (control condition).The testing phase will take place 14 days after the last day of data collection and will consist in a cued recall task and a recognition task using the pictures obtained by the SenseCam® of the participants.According to our hypotheses, the vividness of memories will be higher in events subjected to the VR-SC procedure than in events subjected to the SVR and VbR procedures. This effect is expected for both patients with schizophrenia and controls participants. Since strategies to enrich memory details will be explicitly given to the patients when using the VR-SC procedure, we assume that patients will be able to normalize their scores.
Hyperprolactinemia is a frequent consequence of treatment with typical antipsychotic agents and atypical antipsychotics such as risperidone. Recent studies have suggested that aripiprazole, a partial dopamine agonist, reduces the prolactin response to antipsychotics. Thus, we conducted this study to evaluate the dose effects of adjunctive treatment with aripiprazole on hyperprolactinemia in stable schizophrenic patients maintained with risperidone.
The specific aim of this project is to test if memantine add-on therapy will be helpful for patients with first episode schizophrenia who present with or without cognitive impairments and negative symptoms, to examine the efficacy and safety of memantine as an adjuvant agent to their ongoing maintenance therapy with atypical antipsychotics. Our objectives include: 1. Test memantine add-on by 2 different dosages comparing to a placebo-controlled group of clinically stable first episode schizophrenic patients who are under second-generation antipsychotic maintenance therapy. The results will give us information regarding effective dosage and the profile of adverse drug reactions while using on this population. 2. Examine whether the effect of memantine add-on will be affected by any significant baseline clinical variables or predisposed cognitive deficits. That is to say, if memantine will only demonstrate adjunctive effect on those who are cognitively impaired or its effect is independent from baseline cognitive functioning or the severity of baseline psychopathology. 3. Examine the changes in negative symptoms as the secondary outcomes to see if such a cognitive enhancing effect to be concurrent with an improvement in negative symptoms or independent from changes in negative symptoms. 4. Treat the changes in positive symptoms and other clinical outcomes, such as readmission, being employed/going back to school, and psycho-social functioning scores as the tertiary outcomes to examine the effectiveness of memantine add-on.
The proposed study is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of the value of adjunctive intranasal oxytocin added to existing antipsychotic treatment compared with adjunctive placebo in subjects with schizophrenia. Enrolled subjects will receive 6 weeks of treatment with one of the following adjunctive to a stable antipsychotic regimen: 1) 84 International Units (IU)/day intranasal oxytocin (42 IU twice a day) 2) 168 IU/day intranasal oxytocin (84 IU twice a day) or 3) intranasal placebo. The study will be conducted over 2 years. Approximately eighty subjects will be entered into the study. We hypothesize that augmentation of antipsychotics with intranasal oxytocin will significantly improve psychopathology ratings as compared to placebo and an improvement in certain cognitive functions may also be observed.
Severe mental illness such as schizophrenia and mood disorders typically develops at a young age and can cause life-long disability. Currently available treatments cannot cure severe mental illness. This makes it important to find ways to prevent severe mental illness in young people before it has a chance to develop. This research study will pilot a new preventive intervention for young people who are at high risk of developing severe mental illness. The investigators will target early preceding factors (the 'antecedents') to severe mental illness which includes anxiety, unusual hearing and visual experiences, the loss of previously acquired abilities, and sudden and unpredictable changes in mood. These antecedents strongly predict an increased risk of developing severe mental illness. They are often impairing and distressing to the individual but can be improved with self-management skills and parent training, and they are present in the individual years before the onset of severe mental illness which makes them an ideal target for early intervention. The goal is to intervene early enough in the young person's life that severe mental illness can be prevented, hopefully leading to a happy, healthy and productive adulthood. The investigators want to test the acceptability and short-term efficacy of this new preventive intervention.
Objective of the trial is to study if famotidine add-on treatment is more effective than placebo add-on in reducing symptoms of schizophrenia among patients receiving insufficient response to ongoing antipsychotic treatment.
There were a few studies about the relationship of structural or functional abnormalities of brain and social cognitive dysfunctions in patients with schizophrenia. In addition, default network, which increases activity during mental explorations referenced to oneself including remembering, considering hypothetical social interactions, and thinking about one's own future, may be associated with social cognitive dysfunctions in patients with schizophrenia. Therefore, we will investigate the dysfunction of default network in patients with schizophrenia compared with healthy controls and the effect of default network dysfunctions on the social cognition in patients with schizophrenia.
The aim of this project is to undertake a randomized placebo controlled trial of cognitive remediation therapy (CRT) that focuses on working memory training in a sample of community based patients with chronic schizophrenia or other psychoses. Cognitive deficits are a problem for many people with schizophrenia. This study will use computerized cognitive remediation training (which the participant can carry out at home) over a period of a few months.
The study examine the effectiveness of an integrated care program including therapeutic assertive community treatment (ACT) for people with psychotic disorders fulfilling severe and persistent mental illness (SPMI, ACCESS-II study).