Active clinical trials for "Fibrosis"

This study will evaluate how liver stiffness measurements made with ShearWave™ Elastography (SWE) correspond with a biopsy result (currently the gold standard). The population that will be evaluated are Chinese patients infected with the Hepatitis B virus.

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a condition characterized by an increased pulmonary vascular resistance that can lead to right heart failure and death. Several diseases are known etiologies of PAH including scleroderma and cirrhosis. The presence of PAH in the context of systemic sclerosis or cirrhosis has a dramatic impact on prognosis and survival of the connective tissue or liver disease. Despite advances in the diagnosis of PAH, echocardiography remains a necessary test for screening PAH in patients with scleroderma or cirrhosis. However, echocardiography is less than ideal for diagnosing PAH and predicting treatment response. Thus, there is a pressing need to identify methodologies that can accurately and non-invasively recognize the presence of PAH in patients with scleroderma and cirrhosis. Hypothesis: To measure endothelial function and exhaled gases in patients with scleroderma and cirrhosis. To assess whether they correlate with the presence or the development of PAH. The degree of local (forearm) capillary vasodilation during treprostinil iontophoresis identifies patients who will develop PAH and in those already diagnosed PAH predicts response to PAH-specific therapies.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa (Pa) is the bacterium that causes one of the most consequential lung infections in people with CF. Many young children do not have Pa in their lungs but will become infected as they get older. The investigators want to learn more about how Pa is passed from person to person, especially to someone with Cystic Fibrosis (CF).

The purpose of this study is the psychometric validation of a self-administered dyspnea questionnaire, usable in clinical practice in order to assess dyspnea and its impact on patients with chronic respiratory diseases.

Our research is comparing the lungs of babies and young children with CF (cystic fibrosis) to those without CF. We are looking at the blood flow in the lungs to help doctors better understand how CF damages lungs and how to prevent this damage in the future. We will use MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) and special blood tests as ways to understand early changes in the lungs of babies and young children with CF. We will look at the special blood tests to see if they can work as signals for the doctors to better understand when changes are happening in the lungs. For the babies with CF, we will compare MRI images of the lungs to their CT images (also sometimes called CAT scans or Computerized Tomography). We hope that this study will help us reduce the number of X-rays and CT scans children with CF might get in the future. Because MRI's do not use radiation, this could reduce the amount of radiation exposure that children with CF would get over their lifetime.

The purpose of this research is to learn more about the heart and blood vessels in the lungs of people with cystic fibrosis (CF). This study will include approximately 36 children and adults with CF and 12 children and adults without CF. The study will involve one magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) . The research also includes blood samples to look at inflammation and lung tests called spirometry and Lung Clearance Index (LCI) determined by Multiple Breath Washout test. For the CF subjects, enrollment will be timed to coincide with routine scheduled computerized tomography (CT) or the CF subject may choose to have a CT for research purposes. The MRI will be compared to CT images of the lungs. The goal is to develop better imaging that does not use radiation.

Non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) are opportunistic pathogens normally found in soil and water that are being cultured from Cystic Fibrosis (CF) airways at an increasing frequency. They have been demonstrated to cause clinically significant lung disease in some cases and the transmission of NTM, from person to person has been proposed. There are currently no standardized guidelines for isolation of those colonized or infected with NTM. The investigators will measure particle droplet size from patients with CF who have positive sputum cultures for NTM with the hypothesis that they will be in a range that can spread infection.

This study is designed to evaluate the risk of cataracts (lens opacities) and describe the best corrected distance vision (with glasses/contacts for those who wear them) of pediatric patients with Cystic Fibrosis who are 11 years of age or younger at the time of ivacaftor treatment initiation and are receiving or planning to receive commercially-available ivacaftor in the US.

Despite the implementation of modern public health interventions, 1 in 5 adults in the United States are either current or former smokers and remain at risk for the development of chronic lung diseases. It is unknown how or why any one individual smoker can develop a wide range of lung diseases including chronic obstructive lung disease and/or pulmonary fibrosis. The purpose of this protocol is to collect clinical data, blood, urine, and bronchoalveolar samples from smokers and non-smokers in an attempt to establish phenotypic clinical profiles that correspond to divergent pathways in the expression of such proteins as the transforming growth factor-beta1 (TGF-beta <=1). The information generated from this study will provide insight into the pathogenesis of smoking-related lung injury and potentially allow for the development of early therapeutic interventions.

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a progressive, fatal, fibrotic disorder of the lung. The estimated prevalence is 30-80/100,000 in the United States with incidence estimates clearly rising. A major challenge in the care of patients with IPF is determining prognosis. The natural history of IPF is usually one of inexorable decline in lung function, ultimately resulting in death from respiratory failure. However, longitudinal physiologic decline in IPF is heterogeneous and difficult to predict in individual patients. While some patients with IPF may remain stable for years, in others the disease may progress rapidly over a relatively short time. We hypothesize that peripheral blood biomarkers based on extracellular matrix and matrix-modifying molecules will improve prognostication in patients with IPF.