Active clinical trials for "Autistic Disorder"

This Mentored Career Development Award will lay the foundation for a career focused on addressing two Grand Challenges in Global Mental Health priorities: 1) improving child access to evidence-based mental health care, and 2) reducing the duration of untreated illness by developing culturally-sensitive early interventions. The proposed research aims to assess implementation barriers and facilitators as well as the impact of a brief caregiver coaching early autism intervention adapted for use in a low resource setting. Data from this pilot study would inform scalable early autism intervention programs for implementation in underserved, low resource, and low-literacy populations globally.

Several independent evaluations have supported the effectiveness of the Secret Agent Society (SAS) Program in improving the social-emotional functioning of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) in clinic- (Beaumont & Sofronoff, 2008; Tan, Mazzucchelli & Beaumont, submitted), school-(Beaumont, Rotolone & Sofronoff, in press; Einfeld et al., submitted) and remote Skype/telephone-assisted delivery contexts (Sofronoff, Silva & Beaumont, in press).The present study aims to extend on the above literature by conducting a 6-month randomized controlled trial evaluating the effectiveness, utility and acceptability (including cultural acceptability) of the Secret Agent Society (SAS) social-emotional skills training program. Specifically, the study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the SAS Program for 8-12 year-old children with social difficulties in the context of a range of diagnosed mental health conditions and/or developmental disorders, including anxiety disorders, ADHD, and Autism Spectrum Disorder.

This study will assess the effectiveness of the ketogenic diet (high-fat, low-carbohydrate, and moderate protein) in treating autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Three study groups will be comprised of children (2-21 years of age) based on whether or not they have ASD and receive the ketogenic diet - ASD/ketogenic diet, ASD/non-ketogenic diet, and non-ASD/non-ketogenic diet.

The purpose of this research is to study the effects of a novel artificial intelligence (AI) tool for automatic facial expression recognition that runs on Google Glass through an Android app to deliver social emotion cues to children with autism during social interactions. This novel device will use a camera, microphone, head motion tracker to analyze the behavior of the subject during interactions with other people. The system is designed to give participants non-interruptive social cues in real-time and will record social responses that can later be used to help aid behavioral therapy. It is hypothesized that the system's ability to provide continuous behavioral therapy during social interactions will enable faster gains in social skills.

The Social ABCs is an evidence-based, developmentally informed, caregiver-mediated behavioural intervention for toddlers with suspected or confirmed Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). It is based on principles of Pivotal Response Treatment (PRT, grounded in Applied Behavioural Analysis), and responsive parenting. The two key targets of this program are functional verbal communication and positive caregiver-child affect sharing. This intervention takes place in the context of play and daily routines, and in all contexts is made to be fun. In both a pilot study and a recently completed randomized control trial, toddlers whose caregivers received training in the Social ABCs intervention showed significant gains in early language development (both responsivity and initiations), increased child smiling (mediated by parent smiling), and a trend toward increased social orienting (one important manifestation of social attention). In an effort to make the Social ABCs more feasible for community service providers to provide this intervention to higher number families, an abbreviated version of the Social ABCs intervention is being offered in a mixed group/individual format in a clinic setting. The primary goal of this pilot project is to assess feasibility of this abbreviated program in the novel format and setting. The secondary goal is to train clinical service providers to facilitate this intervention, thus introducing the program into community practice.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether CM-AT is safe and effective in treating the core symptoms of autism in children with all levels of fecal chymotrypsin.

The purpose of this study is to determine the effectiveness of Primary Care Stepping Stones Triple P (PC-SS Triple P), an empirically supported parent mediated intervention, to improve the behavioral functioning of children newly diagnosed with Autism (aged 2-12 years), increase parental resilience and decrease parental stress.

Some individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) also demonstrate irritability or aggression, which can interfere with functioning. The purpose of this pilot study is to test whether transdermal nicotine is effective for irritability and/or aggression in adults with ASD using a double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial. Subjects will participate in three visits. At the first visit, subjects are screened for eligibility and enrolled. Baseline measures include rating scales and a frustrative computerized task. They will then wear seven days of transdermal nicotine or placebo. Visit two is on day seven and the study measures are repeated, vital signs and side effects monitored. Subjects will return for a third and final visit on day 21 to repeat the study measures performed during visit two.

The purpose of this study is to determine how osteopathic manual medicine (OMM) will affect core autism features including social and communication deficits. The investigators believe that OMM approaches can positively influence some features associated with Autism/Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).

The overarching purpose of this pilot study is to collect preliminary data regarding the variability of weight gain associated with lurasidone (Latuda©) treatment of antipsychotic naive children and adolescents in order to inform decisions about including a lurasidone arm in a future large scale trial of different approaches to minimize antipsychotic associated weight gain in the pediatric population. In adults, lurasidone appears to cause minimal weight gain. The participants will be 6-19 years old with psychotic spectrum, mood spectrum, or autism spectrum disorders. They will have 4 weeks or less of lifetime antipsychotic exposure.