Active clinical trials for "Pulmonary Disease, Chronic Obstructive"

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a lung disease caused by cigarette smoke that affects millions of people. In the United States, COPD is the 3rd leading cause of death making it one of our most important public health problems. Some people with COPD get disease flares that are called acute exacerbations of COPD - or AECOPDs for short. When people get an AECOPD they experience increased shortness of breath, wheezing and cough; symptoms that often require urgent or emergent treatment by healthcare providers. In the most severe, life-threatening situations, people with AECOPDs are put on a ventilator in the emergency department and admitted to the intensive care unit. Most AECOPDs can be treated with low doses of medications called steroids. This is good because high doses of steroids can cause unwanted side effects. Unfortunately, recent studies suggest that the sickest people, those admitted to the intensive care unit needing ventilator support, need higher doses of steroids because they may have resistance to these important medications. The investigators are studying steroid resistance during very severe AECOPDs so that we can eventually develop better and safer therapies for these vulnerable people.

Studying the microbiome of the lung in patients treated with endobronchial lung volume reduction coils for emphysema

The purpose of the project is to investigate changes in the quadriceps muscle and cardiovascular regulation during exercise in relation to improved lung function after lung transplantation in patients with COPD.

The purpose of this study is to establish the reference values of impulse oscillometry (IOS) in healthy Chinese, and compare the indices of IOS in patients with lung disease, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma, interstitial lung disease (ILD), and upper airway Obstruction (UAO).

Hospitalization is a traumatic event for the patient and his family at any age nevertheless in the older age. One of its consequences is the difficulty to resume previous activity of daily living especially in older (over 75 years) patients. Sub acute completes the acute phase of the hospitalization and its main purpose is to improve the patient's functional status and quality of life. There are not enough clinical trails to proof this assumption. The purpose of our study is to compare the outcome of acute and sub-acute hospitalization programs by a randomized controlled prospective intervention study. Outcome measures will comprise activity of daily living, functional status, re-hospitalization and utilization of medical services following the hospitalization.Study hypothesis is that sub-acute hospitalization will improve outcomes and will cost less.

Asthma and COPD are characterized by airway narrowing. The most potent, physiological mechanism leading to bronchodilation is taking a deep inspiration. This protects healthy subjects against bronchoconstrictive stimuli, and reverses pre-existing bronchoconstriction. However, the deep breath-induced bronchoprotection and -bronchodilation is impaired in asthma. We questioned whether this is specific for asthma (in comparison to COPD), and whether this is associated with bronchial inflammation and -remodelling. The study is a two-groups comparison, of physiological and pathological disease markers, obtained by methacholine challenges, monitoring airways resistance, and by taking bronchial biopsies.

Patients admitted to the hospital with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are evaluated with regard to early follow-up by a specialized nurse in the home after discharge.

Although some important progresses were made in the field of the meridian research, no breakthroughs have been achieved. Besides,there are some problems in meridian researches. The majority of the existing studies involve lots of subjective assessments for meridian phenomena. In addition, few studies have investigated the site specificity between two specific meridians.Therefore, this study is designed to detect the microcirculatory characteristics of meridian phenomena by using an objective assessment tool and investigate the site specificity for the meridian-visceral association and surface-surface association between two specific meridians.

Exacerbations, in particular during chronic Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PA) infection, are very important in the prognosis of patients with non-cystic fibrosis bronchiectasis (BE). In Cystic Fibrosis patients, PA biofilms are associated with chronic respiratory infections and are the primary cause of their increased morbidity and mortality. However, the presence and role in exacerbations of PA biofilms, microbiome dysbiosis and inflammatory biomarkers has not been studied in depth in BE patients. Our aim is to determine the association between PA chronic infection and its biofilms with the number of exacerbations in the next year (primary outcome), time until next exacerbation, quality of life, FEV1 and inflammatory biomarkers (secondary outcomes) in BE patients with or without chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The investigators will include and follow up during 12 months post study inclusion, 48 patients with BE and 48 with BE-COPD, with a positive sputum culture of PA. During stability and follow up (and in each exacerbation) The investigators will collect 4 sputum, 4 serum samples, perform spirometry, and quality of life tests every three months. For the biomarkers subproject, 4 additional serum samples will be collected at: exacerbation, 3-5 days after treatment, at 30 days and three months post-exacerbation. Biomarkers will be measured by commercial kits and Luminex. The investigators will quantify PA colony forming units (CFU)/mL, their resistance pattern, their mutation frequency and isolate mucoid and non-mucoid colonies. In each sputum, the investigators will analyze by Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy (CLSM) and Fluorescent in situ Hybridizatrion (FISH) PA biofilms, their size, bacterial density and their in situ growth rate. Specific serum antibodies against PA will be determined through Crossed Immunoelectrophoresis. In addition, the investigators will indentify potential respiratory microbiome and gene expression patterns predictive for exacerbations, or with a protective role against chronic PA infection, as well as their association with biofilms. Microbiome analysis will be performed through the Illumina Miseq platform. Finally, the investigators will explore the antimicrobial activity of novel combinations of antibiotics against PA, both in in vitro planktonic cultures and in a biofilm model, and will include testing of antibiotic-containing alginate nanoparticles.

This prospective, single centre, 8 weeks, open-label study is designed to evaluate in real-life the effect of triple Beclometasone/Formoterol/Glycopyrronium (BDP/F/G) therapy on cough efficacy, assessed by cough peak flow (CPF), after 8 weeks' treatment in patients with moderate to severe COPD. The study's hypothesis is that in symptomatic moderate to severe COPD patients the administration of fixed dose combination BDP/F/G, by reducing lung hyperinflation (LH) and targeting small airways, may accordingly improve the cough efficacy. The increase in cough efficacy might in turn positively influence the quality of life of patients and underlie the prevention of acute exacerbations of COPD.