View clinical trials related to Spinal Muscular Atrophy.
Filter by:SPOT SMA is a prospective NIH-supported clinical study targeting pre-symptomatic or recently diagnosed infants and children with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) types 1, 2, or 3 and their healthy control siblings less than 36 months of age at the time of study enrollment. The main objective of the study is to prospectively collect longitudinal clinical outcomes and provide counseling and education to parents of newly diagnosed children. The study will assess the impact of current standard of care management paradigms and interventions on health outcomes in newly diagnosed SMA infants and children with type 1, 2 or 3 and age appropriate controls. There is no investigational drug and no specific intervention in this study. Rather, the investigators will document outcomes related to current therapies provided to participating subjects, and will educate participants about possible clinical trial opportunities.
The goal of this study is to establish a genetic registry of patients with early-onset motor neuron and neuromuscular diseases. The investigators will collect samples from patients with a motor neuron or a neuromuscular disorder and their family members. The samples to be collected will be obtained using minimally invasive (whole blood) means. The research team will then extract high quality genomic DNA or RNA from these samples and use it to identify and confirm novel gene mutations and to identify genes which regulate the severity of motor neuron/neuromuscular diseases.
Ambulation would bring many physiological and psychological benefits and getting up and walking has been a dream for paraplegia patients.The reciprocating gait orthoses (RGOs) for paraplegics particularly draws research attentions because it mimics human gait pattern.But, the high energy consumption and low walking speeds caused the frequent abandonment or the low utilization of the reciprocating gait orthoses.To improve the design reducing the energy expenditure, it requires biomechanical analysis of the pathological gait such that the gait deviations and energy consuming mechanisms can be identified and remedial means can be implemented. The investigators hypotheses will include that there would exist an energy saving mechanism of human reciprocating locomotion based on the principle of conservation of mechanical energy.Secondly, kinematic and kinetic gait determinants could be derived from the energy saving mechanism. Finally, the control of knee joint coordinating with the hip joint movements would facilitate the gait progression and further reduce the energy consumption. The objective of this clinical trial is to evaluate the gait of paraplegic patients with reciprocating gait orthoses and to support the investigators research in biomechanical analysis, design and control of reciprocating gait orthoses for paraplegia patients. An experiment to study the pathological gait of paraplegia patients with an existing reciprocating gait orthosis will be carried out.
Our aim is to establish multi-center national Egyptian database of information for inherited and acquired neuromuscular diseases in infants and children from 0 to 18 years of age.
Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), an autosomal recessive disorder, is characterized by muscle weakness due to degeneration of anterior horn cells in the spinal cord and brain stem nuclei. It has a variable incidence of 1 in 6700 to 1 in 25000 live births and prevalence of 0.12 to 25 per 10,000 populations in different geographic areas and genetic constitution. A homozygous deletion/mutation involving exon 7 in SMN1 (survival motor neuron 1) is present in around 95% of the cases, resulting in the biochemical deficiency of the SMN protein. A genomic duplication at the same locus produces nearly identical SMN2 (survival motor neuron 2) that differs from SMN1 by a nucleotide substitution that promotes exon 7 exclusion thus giving rise to only a fraction of the full length protein. Phenotypic variation in SMA correlates with the number of SMN2 gene copies and the level of SMN protein in cells. Several hypotheses including defective inhibition of apoptosis, glutamate excitotoxicity and lack of a neurotrophic factor(s) in nerve or muscle have been speculated in the pathogenesis of SMA. Valproic acid (VPA), a histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor, directly increases SMN expression in SMA patient-derived cell lines in vitro. Till date 3 open label trials and 1 placebo controlled RCT of VPA in human subjects have been published, all indicating a possible benefit in strength and/or motor function. Till date there is no effective therapy for SMA. Therapy is mainly supportive and palliative which can prolong lifespan and prevent complications to some extent without actually curing the disease. Children with SMA may have a reduced capacity to synthesis carnitine consequent to significantly diminished skeletal muscle mass. VPA independently inhibits carnitine transport and its metabolites deplete carnitine levels by binding to them. So along with valproate these patients should be supplemented with carnitine. With this background the investigators have planned a double blind randomized placebo controlled trial of Valproate and levocarnitine in 60 children (30 each in intervention and control arm) with Spinal Muscular Atrophy aged 2-15 years over a 2 year period with one baseline and four follow up visits. The study will be conducted in the Department of Pediatrics, AIIMS at the Myopathy clinic.
In this project, we will establish the efficient and accurate gene dose determination system by combining the heterodulex analysis and gene dose analysis on DHPLC platform based on various quantitative and multiplex PCR strategies and applying on detecting the carriers- in- risk and patients with spinal muscular atrophy.This method is, therefore, based on the observation that the amount of PCR product generated from each site of amplification is proportional to the amount of starting template. Detection of PCR products is carried out on DHPLC, which provide the sensitivity required for the detection of the single-copy dosage changes.
In this, here we want to present a new method for analysis variation in gene copy number for patients and carriers of SMA. This is a relative quantitation method and, therefore, relies on the inclusion of one or more internal control or reference sequences; quantitation of DNA is relative to this reference sequence of known copy number. A peak height from within a potentially duplicated or deleted target region is amplified simultaneously with a disomic reference region in a multiplex PCR system.