Active clinical trials for "Respiratory Tract (Lung and Bronchial) Diseases"

Vasculitis is group of diseases where inflammation of blood vessels is the common feature. Patients typically present with fever, fatigue, weakness and muscle and joint aches. These symptoms are very common among many different diseases, not just vasculitis. A clustering of other symptoms, physical examination findings, blood tests, radiology and biopsy help make the diagnosis. There are currently no criteria to help doctors make a diagnosis of vasculitis when a patient presents with these non specific symptoms and they are reliant on previous experience and disease definitions. One of the aims of this project is to develop diagnostic criteria for the primary systemic vasculitides (granulomatosis with polyangiitis (Wegener's), microscopic polyangiitis, Churg Strauss syndrome, polyarteritis nodosa, giant cell arteritis, Takayasu arteritis). We, the investigators, will do this by studying a large group of patients with vasculitis and comparing them to a large group of patients that present in a similar way, but do not have vasculitis. By comparing the 2 groups we will create a list of items to differentiate between vasculitis and 'vasculitis mimics'. We also aim to update the current classification criteria. Classification criteria are used to group patients into different types of vasculitis, once a diagnosis of vasculitis has been made, and are useful for studying patients in clinical trials with similar or identical diseases. The current classification criteria (American college of Rheumatology 1990 criteria) were developed 20 years ago, before the availability of some important diagnostic tests (e.g. antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibodies [ANCA]), and are now not consistent with some of the current disease definitions. Therefore to progress future research in vasculitis, it is important that the classification criteria are updated. We will recruit 260 patients with each of the 6 types of vasculitis and compare them with 1300 controls (patients with the 5 other types of vasculitis), in order to determine the optimal combination of symptoms, signs and investigations that classify each person into the appropriate group.

Try to find lung cancer stem cells from primary culture of routine surgical resection of lung cancer tissue including cancer cells and stroma cells, then characterization the established cell lines, and compare the difference of stroma cells between tumor part and surrounding part.

The purpose of this study is to determine how electrical impedance is modified in relation to extracellular space body fluid retention detected by an electrical bioimpedance method in patients with heart failure.

The aim of the study is to assess the correlation between airflow limitation, perception of dyspnea and functional capacity with anatomic changes in pulmonary structure as seen on High Resolution CT in COPD patients.

The aim of the study is to develop an interview to ask patients with COPD about their fear of death and dying, their needs and wishes at the end-of-life. Afterwards, the patients receive a brief psychological intervention to develop coping strategies for chronic illness. Beside this a general purpose of this intervention is to improve patients' quality of life.

Lung adenocarcinoma in Chinese females is hypothesized to be determined by both genetic and environmental factors. In this grant proposal, we propose to map the loci of susceptibility genes of female lung adenocarcinoma based on multiplex families recruited in Taiwan. We focus on a unique pathological type of a unique population in order to reduce heterogeneity of the genetic background. Compared with western women, female Chinese population has a high prevalence of lung adenocarcinoma. Our reasoning is that if we focus on a specific sub-type, which has a familial basis, we will increase the probability of identifying genes associated with female lung adenocarcinoma. The primary goal of this study is to identify the genetic and environmental determinants of female lung adenocarcinoma, and study the relationship between gene polymorphisms and clinical manifestation profiling of lung cancer.

This project is to study the methylation status of the transcriptional regulatory region of CD44 gene in surgically resected NSCLC specimens and normal lung tissue, correlate the methylation status of promoter region with the expression of CD44 gene, and analyze if methylation is associated with survival.

Among several markers of inflammation and sepsis, procalcitonin (PCT) markers is being studied to investigate their accuracy for the diagnosis of bacterial infections. PCT is the prehormone of calcitonin, which is normally secreted by the C cells of the thyroid in response to hypercalcemia; under these normal conditions, negligible serumPCT concentrations are detected. The mechanism proposed for PCT production after inflammation and its role are still not completely known. It is believed that PCT is produced by the liver and peripheral blood mononuclear cells, modulated by lipopolysaccharides and sepsis-related cytokines. It binds to polysaccharides in pathogens, activating the classical complement pathway. The reported diagnostic accuracy of PCT for the diagnosis of bacterial infections has varied across studies.

Aims are to assess periodontal health and salivary stress/ immunity responses in COVID-19 survivors

Neonatal mortality remains unacceptably high. Globally, the majority of mothers now deliver in health facilities in low resource settings where quality of newborn care is poor. Health systems strengthening through digitial quality improvement systems, such as the Neotree, are a potential solution. The overarching aim of this study is to complete the co-development of NeoTree-gamma with key functionalities configured, operationalised, tested and ready for large scale roll out across low resource settings. Specific study objectives are as follows: To further develop and test the NeoTree at tertiary facilities in Malawi and Zimbabwe To investigate HCPs and parent/carer view of the NeoTree, including how acceptable and usable HCWs find the app, and potential barriers and enablers to implementing/using it in practice. To collect outcome data for newborns from representative sites where NeoTree is not implemented. To test the clinical validity of key NeoTree diagnostic algorithms, e.g. neonatal sepsis and hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy (HIE) against gold standard or best available standard diagnoses. To add dashboards and data linkage to the functionality of the NeoTree To develop and test proof of concept for communicating daily electronic medical records (EMR) using NeoTree To initiate a multi-country network of newborn health care workers, policy makers and academics. To estimate cost of implementing NeoTree at all sites and potential costs at scale