Active clinical trials for "Carotid Artery Diseases"

Stroke is the first and the fourth leading cause of death in the United States and China, respectively. Disruption of cerebrovascular vulnerable atherosclerotic plaque is the major etiology of ischemic stroke. Therefore, early detection and treatment of vulnerable plaques occurring at the feeding arteries to brain (cerebral arteries) will be helpful for prevention of stroke. Atherosclerosis is a systemic disease that usually affects multiple vascular beds. Previous studies have shown that these high risk lesions in different segments of cerebral arteries (intracranial and extracranial arteries) might be racially specific. It is reported that, in stroke patients, intracranial vulnerable plaques are prevalent in Asian populations whereas atherosclerosis more frequently involves extracranial carotid arteries in American subjects. However, these findings are based on angiographic imaging approaches via measuring arterial luminal stenosis. Because the atherosclerotic plaque often appears as outward expansion, namely positive remodeling during progression, measuring luminal stenosis will underestimate the disease severity. Hence, directly viewing the plaque in the vessel wall is strongly suggested in order to objectively evaluate the cerebrovascular vulnerable plaque. High resolution, black-blood magnetic resonance (MR) imaging has been widely used to accurately characterize carotid vulnerable plaque in the last two decades. The aim of using MR black-blood techniques is to suppress the blood signal (black) to enhance the signal contrast between the vessel wall and blood in the arterial lumen. Excellent agreement has been achieved between MR imaging and histology in identification of plaque components, such as intraplaque hemorrhage and lipid core. For assessing carotid plaque, MR imaging is superior to computed tomography and ultrasound imaging techniques due to its advantages including noninvasive imaging, lack of ionizing radiation, excellent soft tissue resolution, and multi-parametric image acquisition. The Investigators hypothesize that there are specific characteristics in carotid vulnerable plaques in Chinese patients with ischemic cerebrovascular events such as ischemic stroke and transient ischemic attack (TIA). This study seeks to investigate the characteristics of vulnerable plaque in carotid arteries using high resolution, black-blood MR imaging in patients with recent TIA or ischemic stroke. This is a cross-sectional, multicenter study. A total of 1000 patients will be recruited from more than 10 different hospitals across China within 3 years. All patients will undergo MR imaging for brain and carotid arteries within two weeks after symptom onset. The prevalence of carotid vulnerable plaque and its correlations with brain ischemic lesions, traditional risk factors, and regional distribution of China will be determined.

Radiation-associated carotid vasculopathy is a common late sequelae in patients with head and neck cancer, which correlates with the incidence of stroke. Currently, little is known about the incidence of radiation-associated carotid vasculopahty in the context of intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT). The aim of this study is to determine whether IMRT will increase the incidence of carotid vasculopathy in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC).

150 selected patients will be recruited, who have at least one atherosclerotic plaque in the carotid artery that is thicker than 2.0 mm and which is determined to be uniformly or predominantly echolucent by standard ultrasonography. For each of the plaques, standard ultrasonography will be used to evaluate lesion echogenicity, while contrast-enhanced ultrasonography (CEUS) will be used to perform the visual and quantitative analysis of neovascularization. Each technique will be applied at baseline (at the time of study enrollment) and following 0.5、1 year of Elococumab Injection treatment. During the study, these patients will be treated with Elococumab Injection (1ml:140mg),ih, every two weeks.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether and what extent blood pressure variability is associated with arterial stiffness and carotid atherosclerosis, furthermore to compare the difference in the relationship of the types of blood pressure variability with arterial stiffness and carotid atherosclerosis.

This is a prospective and observational study in patients with type two diabetes. The study hypothesis is that chronic hyperglycemia causes an increase in the microcirculation on the carotid artery wall and retina, evaluated by angio-OCT. Furthermore, the reestablishment of normoglycemia would decrease this microcirculation, which could trigger hypoxic and ischemic changes, accelerating preclinical atherosclerosis. The study goal is to describe the microangiopathy in both territories in patients with type two diabetes and chronic hyperglycemia, and to evaluate changes after the reestablishment of normoglycemia.

A prospective study of 700 patients with coronary artery disease will undergo non invasive evaluation of their carotid arteries by ultrasound and microwave radiometry. The patients will be followed up for 3 years and their outcome regarding the cardiovascular events (death, cardiac events, cerebrovascular events) will be recorded

Purpose: To investigate the different sound spectrum of carotid arteries and to analyze its relationship to the vessel disease, and to build a new biomarker about vascular disorder. Methods: To record the carotid phonoangiography with digital stereoscopy and analysis the spectrum with different algorithm such as FFT, wavelet, entropy, complexity, and HHT. The results will be correlated and comparison to the finding in clinical, carotid Doppler and duplex, CTA, MR, and catheter angiography. Statistics: The significance of difference between parameters was computed using t-tests or paired t-test etc. A p value <0.05 is defined as significant.

Atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease is the major cause of morbidity and mortality in Western societies. It is a complex genetic disorder with many genes involved and significant gene-environment interactions. The aim of the study is to identify novel genetic- and biological-markers of atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis is assessed in the coronary arteries using coronary angiography as well as in the carotid artery (intima-media-thickness) and peripheral vessels (ankle brachial index). Association analysis of genetic and metabolic markers with atherosclerotic burden will be performed to identify novel factors of disposition to atherosclerotic vascular disease.