Active clinical trials for "Cognitive Dysfunction"

Treating cognitive impairment (CI) in multiple sclerosis (MS), the leading cause of disability due to nontraumatic neurological disease in young adults, is an important challenge. The contribution of CI to disability in MS has been increasingly recognized, and CI has been shown to decrease health-related quality of life (HR-QOL), even in the early stages of the disease. CI negatively impacts daily activities such as driving, vocational status, absenteeism, and instrumental activities in persons living with MS (PwMS). No medication has proven to have a consistent symptomatic effect on CI in MS, and disease-modifying therapies only have a small impact on CI progression. CI in MS is dominated by a slowdown in information processing speed (IPS), as well as by disturbances of more specific cognitive functions such as attention, episodic memory (EM), working memory (WM) and executive function (EF). The alteration of IPS has consequences for WM, attention, EF and EM. IPS impairment predicts subsequent disability and vocational status and changes in quality of life (QOL). Cognitive rehabilitation (CR) is the most promising approach for treating MS-related CI, as concluded by recent reviews and meta-analyses, despite important methodological shortcomings. Methodological limitations in early studies have led to disappointing results, and well-designed studies are still scarce. As noted recently, many studies lack a randomized controlled design that includes passive or active control conditions, primary neuropsychological end-points identified a priori, evidence of the sustainability of CR and the inclusion of near and far transfer outcomes. Tertiary outcomes of QOL, metacognition, or other patient-reported outcomes (PROs) are rarely used. In view of the results of these different studies, the investigators propose a single-blind randomized controlled trial of a telerehabilitation program for MS associated CI, based on Rehacom software, using appropriates modules according to specific CI, but complemented by individual remote online rehabilitation sessions allowing a better adaptation of the program to the patient's deficit, a more efficient supervision and meta-cognitive work. This program will be evaluated in terms of effectiveness on neuropsychological tests, effectiveness on specific cognitive domains re-educated according to the impairments detected in the baseline, an ecological evaluation and the impact on daily cognitive functioning. Specific active rehabilitation will be compared to a placebo intervention of the same duration and intensity. Only a multi-center study will make it possible to achieve sufficient number of patients to meet these objectives.

Novel blood-based biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease (AD), such as plasma levels of tau phosphorylated at threonine 181 (p-tau181), have shown great promise in detecting early AD pathology. While current studies point to this biomarker as having great clinical utility, one necessary step before clinical implementation is developing safe and effective methods for disclosure of results. Past risk disclosure studies have shown that disclosing risk for AD based on genetics or amyloid status is safe, but these studies have largely focused on cognitively unimpaired individuals. This study seeks to develop comprehensible educational materials to aid risk disclosure and examine the effect of risk disclosure based on plasma p-tau181 results in a group of participants with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) at imminent risk of converting to dementia. First, educational materials will be developed in collaboration with health communication experts and then refined in focus groups made up of individuals with MCI. Educational materials will be analyzed on several key reading and comprehensibility metrics and will include personalized risk estimate based on a well-accepted risk algorithm (Cullen, et al., 2021). Next, these educational materials will be utilized to disclose risk in a randomized controlled trial with an active control arm receiving disclosure based on age, sex, and cognitive status (based on Mini-Mental State Examination), meant to mimic common methods of clinical diagnostic and prognostic decision making, and an intervention arm receiving disclosure based on the above factors plus plasma p-tau181 results. Outcomes will include measures of comprehension and psychological well-being (anxiety, depression, hopelessness, and distress) and will be assessed immediately after risk disclosure and again at six-month follow-up. It is hypothesized that risk disclosure based on plasma p-tau181 is not more psychologically harmful or less comprehensible than disclosure based on demographic factors and MMSE. This pilot study will provide a necessary step towards moving plasma p-tau biomarkers towards safe clinical implementation and will develop educational materials that can be utilized in future studies and clinical practice.

This study is a phase III Randomized Clinical Trial, prospective, placebo controlled of 12,268 subjects with low to moderate risk of stroke followed by 3 years in 60 Primary Health Care Units in Brazil. The units will be randomized (clusters) to use or not the approach of community health workers with the Stroke Riskometer. After, patients will be randomized to receive the polypill (valsartan 80 mg, amlodipine 5 mg and rosuvastatin 10 mg) or placebo (dose adjustment of amlodipine 2,5 for patients with adverse events). The purpose is to test whether a polypill alone or in combination with lifestyle modification will reduce the incidence of stroke and cognitive impairment in this population.

This project capitalizes on a natural experiment imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic in conjunction with an extensive set of cognitive, emotional, biological, and neuroimaging variables already collected at multiple time points in older adults participating in a clinical trial of exercise and mindfulness. This project will elucidate the effects of stress on cognitive function and emotional health in later life, including biological measures of Alzheimer Disease risk, stress, and aging, with the ultimate goal of discovering how to mitigate these effects, among older adults who have made and maintained a lifestyle change.

In this multi-center study, the investigators plan to develop a simple blood-based test for early detection of Alzheimer's disease (AD). The test is based on a single injection of Pramlintide, an amylin analogue and FDA-approved drug currently used for treatment of diabetes. The investigative team has provided evidence in humans with full-blown AD and AD-relevant mouse models that a single injection of Pramlintide transiently renders the blood brain barrier (BBB) more permeable to Amyloidbeta (Aß) peptides, allowing their efflux from the brain compartment into the blood. This Aß efflux causes a corresponding transient elevation of blood levels of Aß, the magnitude of which the applicants believe is proportional to the brain amyloid load as determined by AV-45 PET. The measured difference in the level of plasma Aß taken just before and a short time after injection should reveal the magnitude of the transient increase in blood Aß levels. Supportive preliminary data comes from later stage (full-blown) AD patients with more in-depth background studies in Tg2576 and 5X Familial Alzheimer's Disease (FAD) mouse models. If successful for use as an early AD (i.e., at the Mild Cognitive Impairment [MCI] stage) biomarker, this could be a game-changer for both early AD diagnostics and clinical trials aimed at identifying and testing the efficacy of drugs useful for treatment of AD at early stages. If Pramlintide is effective in releasing mobile pools of Aß from the brain into the blood, this could also have some therapeutic potential, with the goal of reducing brain amyloid load. Three groups of particpants will be studied: 1) amnestic MCI with or without positive AD imaging pathology, 2) probable AD with positive imaging AD pathology, and 3) controls who have normal cognition and do not have memory complaints.

The effectiveness of conventional exercise, tai chi chuan and health education/usual physical activity over a 6-month intervention period in improving primary outcomes and secondary outcomes in older mild cognitive impairment adults will be compared. Third, whether changes in serum levels of the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), insulin-like growth factor (IGF)-1, and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and expression of the apolipoprotein E (APOE) ε4 allele parallel changes in gait characteristics and cognitive functions after the intervention will be examined.

A single-blinded, randomized controlled trial is designed to compare the effects of social interaction, computerized cognitive training, lower extremity strengthening, and tai chi chuan on improving cognitive functions and gait/mobility and reducing falls among 228 subjects with mild cognitive impairment, in which the influence of adherence to the intervention programs will also be examined.

This goal of this study is to explore the effects of transcranial alternating current stimulation(tACS) combined with computerized cognitive training(CCT) on improving cognition for patients with mild cognitive impairment(MCI). The study will recruit 195 patients with MCI. Participants will undergo baseline cognitve assessment, EEG and structural and functional MRI. Participants will be randomized to active tACS+CCT group, sham tACS+CCT group and active tACS+sham CCT group. At the end of the intervention, 3-month, 6-month and 12-month follow-up, all subjects will repeat the baseline assessments.

Time restricted eating (TRE) is currently the most popular form of intermittent fasting which involves confining the eating window to 8-10 hours (h) and fasting for the remaining hours of the day. TRE is unique in that during the eating window, individuals are not required to count calories or monitor food intake in any way, resulting in high adherence. Accumulating evidence suggests that TRE produces a natural energy deficit of ~350-500 kcal/d. Physical activity in combination with a healthy diet pattern is recommended for older adults. While aerobic type exercise is the most commonly recommended, retention of lean mass via resistance training, especially in older adults, may be more effective at improving mobility, neurological and psychological function, executive and cognitive functioning, and processing speed. TRE combined with physical activity has not been examined in older adults or in people with overweight or obesity. This study holds the potential to 1) decrease body weight 2) improve lean mass 3) improve insulin sensitivity, and 4) improve attention, executive functioning, and processing speed in older adults. The aims of this study will examine the effect of TRE combined with either resistance training or aerobic training on body weight, body composition, metabolic disease risk, and cognition in adults over age 50. It is hypothesized that the TRE combined with resistance training group will see the most significant improvements in body composition, insulin sensitivity and cognition due to lean mass accretion.

Our study objective is to widely implement and evaluate a user-centered, scalable, electronic health record (EHR)-linked strategy for the routine detection of cognitive decline among diverse primary care settings. This strategy, called ToolboxDetect, will provide an efficient and sensitive cognitive screen that can be easily implemented in everyday clinical settings, and is responsive to patient, family, and caregiver concerns for potential symptoms of cognitive decline (CD) and cognitive impairment (CI).