Active clinical trials for "Body Weight"

This lifestyle behavior intervention aims to weight loss in low-income overweight or obese mothers of young children through promotion of stress management, healthy eating, and physical activity. All eligible women will be assigned to the intervention group. The intervention will last 3 weeks and will be delivered via weekly web and individual health coaching sessions.

Participants will be randomized into one of two different experimental groups: 1) Exercise group and 2) No exercise (control group). Subject participation in the study will involve a series of metabolic tests before and after participants undergo a 10% weight loss program (with or without exercise training depending on group randomization). After completing this weight loss portion of the study, participants will then be required to adhere to a high calorie diet program to regain half of the weight the participant lost - followed by the same series of metabolic tests.

Attrition from pediatric weight management programs is unacceptably high, with dropout ranging from 27-73%. This project will utilize a model that predicts dropout from treatment, increasing its power and accuracy through a multi-site observational study. This will result in a powerful tool that will be used to decrease attrition from pediatric weight management, with the potential for widespread dissemination to improve treatment outcomes.

Pregnancy and delivery are major stressors on the female body and contribute significantly to permanent weight gain and associated morbidity in women. This can profoundly affect the ability of active duty (AD) women to advance in their career. The first 12 weeks postpartum are the time period during which the most significant weight loss occurs and is critical in achieving a healthy weight in the first year postpartum. Many factors contribute to effective weight loss in this period among which the most critical are diet, exercise, and sleep. Breast feeding and depression may also affect weight changes postpartum. Research has shown diet to likely be the most crucial of these factors. The PADaWL study is designed as a randomized controlled trial to assess the effects of dietary intervention on weight and physical fitness versus routine postpartum care in the first year postpartum. Subjects will be primiparous AD women from any military service recruited in the obstetric clinic in the third trimester of pregnancy at Tripler Army Medical Center. Data will collected in an ambi-directional fashion with pre-pregnancy physical fitness data, demographic and pregnancy data collected at time of enrollment. Subjects will be randomized to receive intensive virtual sessions with a dietician vs routine postpartum care for the first 12 months postpartum. We will utilize a biometric device to monitor activity levels and sleep, web-based diaries to monitor breast feeding and diet, and validated questionnaires to evaluate depression as well as diet and sleep. Subjects will be monitored weekly for the first 12 weeks postpartum and will then be further evaluated at 6, 9 and 12 months postpartum. Primary outcome is weight at 12weeks postpartum and whether subjects have achieved military standards. Secondary outcome will be weight at 12 months postpartum and whether subject has achieved weight and fitness standards. The study intends to collect large amounts of data, and we intend to analyze which factors may be contributing to weight retention postpartum. This study should provide an accurate assessment of the effects of pregnancy on AD women. It should generate a clean and accurate dataset on which multiple follow-on studies can be performed and provide data for designing further intervention studies in postpartum women. The results of this study should also be able to assist in developing policy and guidance concerning AD women and pregnancy.

This study aims to compare two FDA approved medications (aripiprazole and risperidone) for the treatment of behavioral dysregulation in children with autism spectrum disorders. This trial, done in the context of routine clinical care, will seek to evaluate whether aripiprazole or risperidone is associated with more weight gain in children.

Obesity is an epidemic in the US. With progression of obesity, Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) has been a growing public health issue. Presently there is no cure for NASH.Prevention of progression of fibrosis in NASH is crucial, as they are at a high risk for cirrhosis and may need liver transplant. Recent studies have shown that blocking blood vessels to a particular portion of the stomach (bariatric or left gastric artery embolization) can temporarily decrease levels of the appetite inducing hormone ghrelin, and result in weight loss.The purpose of this study is to determine if Left gastric artery embolization (LGAE) in patients with obesity and NASH leads to clinically significant weight loss with improvement of NASH.

The Generic Database (GDB) is a registry of very low birth weight infants born alive in NICHD Neonatal Research Network (NRN) centers. The GDB collects observational baseline data on both mothers and infants, and the therapies used and outcomes of the infants. The information collected is not specific to a disease or treatment (i.e., it is "generic"). Data are analyzed to find associations and trends between baseline information, treatments, and infant outcome, and to develop future NRN trials.

Worldwide obesity has continued to increase over the past decades. Among the adult women, the overweight and obesity rates in Taiwan are much higher than that of women in nearby Asian countries. In particular, the body mass index of women with low health literacy exceeds the normal range before pregnancy. Without proper supervision, the increase in body weight during pregnancy may result in multiple maternal complications, affect the newborn's health, and increase unnecessary medical expenses in Taiwan's health care system. Thus, assessing pregnant women' s health literacy to manage their body weight is of importance. However, currently, there is no appropriate instrument available in Taiwan to assist health practitioners in assessing the health literacy of pregnant women for weight management. The aim of the study is to develop an instrument to measure the health literacy regarding weight management of pregnant women and examine its psychometric properties.

Pancreas transplantation is currently the most reliable method for glycemic control in insulin dependent diabetic patients. Outcomes of pancreas transplantation have improved significantly over the years due to improved surgical techniques, medical management and immunosuppression. However, weight gain after pancreas transplantation remains a common problem with associated consequences such as development of type 2 diabetes, coronary artery disease, graft loss, metabolic syndrome and increased risk of cardiovascular death. Excessive weight gain is well known after liver and kidney transplantation; however there are very few studies that have looked at weight gain after pancreas transplantation. In a recent study by Knight et al, 26% of the pancreas transplant recipients had excessive weight gain, defined as more than 30% of their baseline weight by 1-year post transplant. The study focused mainly on the endocrine function of the pancreas, explaining that excessive peripheral insulin circulation post-transplant may explain the weight gain. Other factors like immunosuppression, increased oral intake and potentially reduced activity may also have played a role. However no study has looked at the possible role of exocrine secretion from the new pancreatic allograft, combined with exocrine secretion of the old pancreas, leading to excessive availability of digestive juices like trypsin, chymotrypsin, lipase, amylase, gelatinase, elastase etc. Our hypothesis is that the excessive weight gain after pancreas transplant, which is more than in other solid organ transplants, is driven by the excessive digestive juice leading to improved conversion of available food and nutrient into storable energy and subsequently leading to weight gain. The patient will therefore need to either increase physical activity to avoid weight gain post-transplant or significantly reduce caloric intake. Fecal elastase test (FE-1)-elastase is a proteolytic enzyme produced by pancreatic acinar cells. They bind to bile salt and pass through the gut without degradation. These levels correlate well with the other pancreatic enzyme levels. Fecal elastase concentration (FEC) has been used routinely to screen for pancreatic exocrine insufficiency (PEI). Exocrine pancreatic juice has been a target for the management of obesity lately, with the use of drugs like Orlistat (Xenical) that inhibits pancreatic lipase and therefore interfere with the absorption of fat. If our theory of excessive pancreatic juice availability after pancreas transplant can be proven, it can help guide the targeted use and appropriate dosing of such drugs based on the level of the pancreatic juice as measured by the FEC.

Immune dysfunction in individuals with obesity, secondary to chronic inflammation, may have an acute impact on War fighter health and readiness, and subsequent lethality. Indeed, ~51% of military personnel ages 17 or older are overweight, and ~15% have obesity (ranging from 6.4% in the Marine Corps to 18.0% in the Army). In conjunction with in vitro functional tests to assess systemic immune function, the suction blister model is a minimally invasive procedure that allows in vivo assessment of immune function (i.e., skin barrier restoration), and related mechanisms (i.e., pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokine responses at the wound site during the early phases of wound healing), consequent to obesity. We have demonstrated that the blister wound model reliably assesses skin barrier restoration and immune function at the wound site; and that relatively modest sleep disruption degrades immune response at the site of the disrupted skin barrier and delays the initial restoration of the skin barrier. However, our prior work excluded participants with obesity (≥30 kg/m2), since obesity is associated with an altered inflammatory response which may subsequently impact the body's functional response to a skin wound. Prior studies have indicated that immune function and wound healing is perturbed in individuals with obesity versus those without obesity. Existing research mainly relied on blood biomarkers and in vitro tests to assess systemic immune function; however, incorporating the blister wound model permits evaluation of the functional immune response to obesity in addition to local immune response at the wound site. Further, military personnel with obesity may be more physically active than civilians with obesity, which could mitigate the effects of obesity on immune dysfunction. Therefore, the primary aim of this parallel-group study is to utilize a suction blister model and in vitro functional assays to examine differences in immune function between participants without obesity (BMI 18.5-24.9 kg/m2) and with obesity (BMI ≥ 30 kg/m2) and related mechanisms (e.g., local cytokine response at the wound site and circulating markers of inflammation). Research will be conducted in a laboratory environment using males and females with obesity (BMI ≥ 30 kg/m2) compared to normal weight (BMI 18.5-24.9 kg/m2) controls. Participants in the study described herein (n = 50; n = 25 with obesity and n = 25 lean) will undergo baseline testing and a period of dietary surveillance prior to induction of up to eight blisters via suction on participant's forearm, after which time the top layer of blisters will be removed to reveal the dermal layer of skin. The primary outcome measure is initial restoration of the skin barrier (via transepidermal water loss) and additional outcome measures include immune function (e.g., circulating markers of inflammation, cytokines at the blister site, and secretory immunoglobin) and nutrient status. Additionally, to assess the impact of BMI on skeletal muscle inflammation, a subset of volunteers (n = 12 with obesity and n =12 lean) will undergo a single muscle biopsy at the conclusion of skin barrier restoration. Findings from this study will determine if obesity affects the early phases of wound healing and whether further study is warranted, e.g., do stressors exacerbate immune decrements observed in obese individuals, or can nutrition counter-measures mitigate immune decrements given that micronutrient deficiency is common in individuals with obesity.