Active clinical trials for "Alzheimer Disease"

In each of the 7 French areas that should be involved, patients aged 75 years and over from three different sectors will be included: the geriatric consultation unit (60%) and two kinds of nursing homes, private (20%) and state (10%). Outpatients will be included in chronological order; patients in nursing homes will be included at random. The patients and their families will be asked about the treatments received on the day of inclusion. The inclusion period will extend over a year. The investigating practitioners will be asked to fill in a questionnaire reporting the main clinical data, adverse effects occurrence, and information on the treatment given.

The steroid pregnenolone sulfate (PREGS) may be one of the factors responsible for the memory decline related to normal aging or associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD). The purpose of this study is to determine whether plasma levels of PREGS are decreased patients with at mild to moderate AD compared with AD-free control subjects matched for gender and age and to see whether they are inversely correlated with the severity of memory deficits in AD patients. The hypothesis is that blood levels of PREGS are decreased with advanced age and with the stage of AD that would be positively correlated with memory deficits. Therefore PREGS could be considered as an early marker of the memory deficits in AD.

Neuropsychiatric symptoms form part of the clinical picture of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and other dementias. Irrespective of the severity of the disease, the most frequently encountered symptom is apathy. Apathy is increasingly diagnosed in patients with neurological and psychiatric conditions. Apathy is a disorder of motivation, defined as "the direction, intensity and persistence of goal-directed behaviour". Most of the current descriptions acknowledge this point and consider apathy in terms of a lack of goal-directed behaviour, cognition or emotion. The classical neuropsychiatric symptom assessments are subjective structured interview-based, using input from the caregiver and/or the patient. New technologies are likely to provide us with a more objective measure. An example is ambulatory actigraphy, consisting of a piezoelectric accelerometer designed to record arm movement in three dimensions. The aim of the present study is to assess using actigraphy and video recording signal, AD patients with (n = 15) and without (n = 15) apathy and control subjects (n = 5) during an activity of daily living scenario .

The main objective of this non-interventional study was to document the long-term application of galantamine and nootropics (memory enhancing drugs) over a period of 1 year under conditions of daily routine. There were no predefined specifications of diagnostic and therapeutic measures. The decision for treatment with either galantamine or a nootropic had to be made by the treating physician prior to the start of documentation. The following measures were to be documented: safety, tolerability, dementia-associated symptoms (unstable walking, vertigo, awakening at night, shouting/screaming at night, perambulating at night, aggressiveness, agitation, apathy/social retreat, delusions, hallucinations, behavior that poses a risk to self or others, and daytime tiredness), frequency of admissions to nursing homes or nursing services, global functional level, caregiver's burden, and time spent on caregiving. Furthermore, this study aimed to gather knowledge on the differentiated use of the two treatment strategies considering the specific diagnosis of dementia (e.g. Alzheimer's disease only or mixed dementia, i.e. Alzheimer's disease and cerebrovascular disease) and risk profiles.

Aim 1. To compare across three hospital sites the effects on health and cost outcomes observed by the following three interventions, each designed to enhance adaptation and improve outcomes of hospitalized cognitively impaired elders and their caregivers: augmented standard care (ASC) - standard hospital and, if referred, home care plus early identification of CI during the patients' hospitalization by trained registered nurses (RNs) with immediate feedback to patients' primary nurses, attending physicians and discharge planners; resource nurse care (RNC) - standard hospital and, if referred, home care plus early identification of CI during the patient's hospitalization by trained RNs and hospital care by RNs trained in the use of expert clinical guidelines developed to enhance the care management of hospitalized cognitively impaired elders and to facilitate their transition from hospital to home; or, advanced practice nurse care (APNC) - standard hospital care plus transitional (hospital to home) care substituting for standard home care and provided by APNs with advanced training in the management of CI patients using an evidence-based protocol designed specifically for this patient group and their caregivers. [H1] We hypothesize that health and cost outcomes with APNC, a comprehensive intervention designed to meet the unique needs of cognitively impaired older adults hospitalized for an acute medical or surgical event and their caregivers will be associated, relative to health and cost outcomes with ASC and RNC, with improvement in patient, caregiver and cost outcomes. [H2] We hypothesize that improvements in patient, caregiver and cost outcomes observed for the RNC group will be greater than those observed for the ASC group. Aim 2. To compare within each site and over time, health and cost outcomes (identified in Aim 1) from patients treated with either ASC or RNC, both relatively lower intensity interventions, with the outcomes of patients at the same site observed after switching to APNC, a high intensity intervention. [H3] We hypothesize that compared to patients receiving the ASC or the RNC interventions, patients at the same site will have improved patient, caregiver and cost outcomes after the site switches to APNC. [H4] We hypothesize that patient, caregiver and cost outcomes achieved by the groups receiving APNC interventions at T1 and T2 will be similar.

This study is to evaluate the safety and tolerability of single, ascending doses of PAZ-417 in healthy young and healthy elderly subjects. The effect of a high fat meal on the metabolism of PAZ-417 will also be studied, along with blood levels of PAZ-417 . Changes in cognitive function will be assessed.

The purpose of this study is to examine how brain imaging technology can be used with other tests to measure the progression of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and early Alzheimer's disease (AD). This information will aid future clinical trials by providing a standard assessment tool to measure the effects of treatments being studied.

The REVEAL II study provides healthy adult children and siblings of Alzheimer's disease patients with genetic testing and information about their own chances of developing the disease. The study will compare a condensed education and counseling program to the current more extensive program.

The purpose of this study is : to look for changes induced by aging in a population of old subjects, during silent word generation tasks studied by fMRI. to look for a possible link between these changes and alterations in language

This study evaluates the effectiveness of a nurse-managed interdisciplinary (nursing and occupational therapy) clinic serving community dwelling dementia patients and their spouse caregivers. It is grounded in a nursing self-care model that guides nurses to identify interventions that fit with the capabilities of individual patients and compensate for their specific deficits. The occupational therapy assessment uses the Allen Cognitive Levels that identify the abilities and deficits of a particular functional level so that the strategies and approaches taught to caregivers can be tailored to the specific needs of the patient.