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

Advances in paediatric cardiology and cardiac surgery have enabled the survival of most patients born with congenital heart disease (CHD) into adulthood. Many CHD patients have undergone palliative or reparative surgery earlier in life. As patients survive into adulthood, they may need intervention or surgery for residual haemodynamic lesions. This is because they are at risk of arrhythmias secondary to structure heart disease and are susceptible to acquired heart disease. In these patients, pre-operative and post-operative evaluation of right ventricular (RV) structure (shape and volume) and function is an essential component of clinical management. Advances have been made in cardiac imaging so that accurate assessment of the right heart chamber in terms of its structure, function and physiology is possible. However, this technology has as yet never been applied in an effort to comprehensively assess RV structure, function and physiology. Cardiac Magnetic Resonance (CMR) will be used in this comprehensive assessment of structure and function. Thus, this research will allow development of a comprehensive integrated biomedical engineering (BME) R&D platform for in-depth study and clinical diagnosis of the RV structure-function relationship and physiology and its association with biomarker, and exercise capacity in CHD.

Asthma is characterized by chronic airway inflammation of the large and small airways. Asthma patients often have episodes with symptoms of dyspnea, wheezing and nocturnal awakening. Currently available inhaled anti-inflammatory treatments reduce the airway inflammation and treatment but do not cure the disease. Therefore asthma patients often need life-long treatment to control their asthma. In a small subset of patients, their asthma resolves spontaneously. This phenomenon is called asthma remission. Subjects with asthma remission do not experience symptoms or signs of airway inflammation anymore and do not require inhaled treatments. Some subjects with asthma remission also have a completely normal lung function without signs of bronchial hyperresponsivess: they have complete asthma remission. Unfortunately, asthma remission occurs only in a small subset of 15-25% of asthma patients.Objective: to determine the underlying mechanisms and molecular events leading to remission of asthma.

The purpose of the current study is to establish a Liquid biopsy method (positive enrichment by a novel immunomagnetic beads capture assay) for detection of malignant cell in serous effusions and to evaluate its sensitivity and specificity for clinical application.

Evaluation of pulmonary edema is a key factor in monitoring and guidance of therapy in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) patients. To date, methods available at the bedside for estimating the physiologic correlate of pulmonary edema, extravascular lung water(EVLW), often are unreliable or require invasive measurements. The purpose of the this study is to develop a novel approach to reliably assess extravascular lung water by electrical impedance tomography(EIT).

Since the pulmonary artery hypertension is defined based on MPAP and the two previous formulae relating MPAP and PAT were derived in western population, the investigator planned to conduct a prospective study to derive a new formula for measuring MPAP from PAT in Indian population and compare the accuracy of all the three formulae

To evaluate feasibility of photoplethysmography (PPG) of pulmonary arteries in adults children and neonates and to compare normal controls to premature newborns suffering from patent ductus arteriosus and neonates suffering from pulmonary hypertension.

The Investigators hypothesise that asthma is not a single disease, but a syndrome resulting from several distinct underlying disease processes known as endotypes. There are approximately 30,000 genes in humans, and each gene is responsible for the production of a particular protein. Using a technique called "whole genome expression profiling" The Investigators have undertaken a small study looking at the activity of all 30,000 genes in the airway tissue of people with asthma. This work has identified 3 mutually exclusive distinct molecular patterns (endotypes) of severe asthma and has identified other potentially important molecular targets (manuscripts in preparation). In particular,the Investigators have found that 25-50% of patients have asthma associated with the activity of proteins called Th2 cytokines (Th2-high asthma). New treatments are in development that target this pathway. However, the Investigators do not know what is driving severe asthma in patients who do not express these Th2 cytokines. The aim of this study is to investigate in more detail the molecular mechanisms driving severe asthma in patients who do not express Th2 cytokines (Th2-low asthma), so that the Investigators can identify new targets for treatment in this group. To do this the Investigators will collect airway tissue via a telescope (bronchoscope), and analyse gene and protein expression in the tissue. The Investigators will then compare the molecular activity between patients with Th2-high and Th2-low asthma, and healthy control subjects (data obtained from a parallel study).

Asthma is a heterogeneous disease, usually characterized by chronic airway inflammation. It is defined by the history of respiratory symptoms such as wheeze, shortness of breath, chest tightness and cough that vary over time and in intensity, together with variable expiatory airflow limitation. This definition was reached by consensus, based on consideration of the characteristics that are typical of asthma and that distinguish it from other respiratory conditions . Asthma is a problem worldwide, with an estimated 300 million affected individuals .It appears that the global prevalence of asthma ranges from 1% to 18% of the population in different countries .

In the past few years, circulating tumor cells (CTCs), circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), microRNAs, autoantibodies, and T-cell receptor repertoire are new biomarkers of liquid biopsy in cancer, which has been demonstrated to have a great value in diagnostics, treatment evaluation, and prognosis prediction. However, most of previous data were based on late stage tumor patients. This study plans to utilize the minimally invasive method to detect the changes of numbers of CTCs, ctDNA hot spot mutations and methylation signals, microRNAs, autoantibodies, and T-cell receptor repertoire in early stage lung cancer patients before and after pulmonary nodule biopsy, during therapeutic and follow-up periods, in order to evaluate the clinical values of above tumor-related biomarkers.

Relationship between human microbiota and epidemiology of lung cancer