Active clinical trials for "Alzheimer Disease"

The purpose of this study is to examine how a part of the brain called the hippocampus contributes to memory changes that occur with aging and Alzheimer's disease (AD). Memory problems are the most important early symptoms of AD. The hippocampal region of the brain may be responsible for many age- and AD-related memory disorders. This study will use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to examine the structure, chemical composition, and function of the hippocampus in participants with AD, participants with mild memory problems, participants who are healthy but are at risk for AD, and healthy volunteers. Participants in this study will undergo MRI scans of the brain. During the MRI, participants will perform memory tests to demonstrate hippocampal functioning.

The purpose of this study is to improve understanding of neurological conditions. Patients participating in this study will continue receiving medical care, routine laboratory tests, and diagnostics tests (X-rays, CT-scans, and nuclear imaging), from their primary care physician. Doctors at the NIH plan to follow these patients and offer advice and assistance to their primary care physicians.

Motor slowing and cognitive slowing are more prevalent as we age. Importantly, the presence of both in an older person increases their risk of having dementia by ten times. Currently, there are no clinically meaningful predictors of progression to dementia in people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). The main hypothesis is that subtle variations in gait while performing a simple cognitive task is a reliable, easy to perform, and feasible methodology to detect those older adults at higher risk of progression to dementia and also, at higher risk of further mobility decline and falls. Rationale. The Canadian population is aging. According to recent estimates, the proportion of the population aged 65 and older will increase rapidly from 13% in 2005 to 25% by 2031. This increase in proportion is accompanied by a considerable amount of disability and subsequent dependency which has major effects on both the quality of life of older adults and their caregivers, and on the Canadian health care system. An important goal of geriatric medicine is to reduce the gap between life expectancy and disability-free life expectancy by reducing disability and dependency in the later years of life. A substantial portion of this disability stems from two major geriatric syndromes: cognitive impairment and mobility limitation. The ultimate manifestations of these syndromes are dementia and falls. Interestingly, these manifestations often coexist in elderly people: falling is a common geriatric syndrome affecting about a third of older adults each year, and dementia affects about a third of Canadians aged 80 and over. Together, dementia and falls are responsible for much of the discomfort, disability, and health care utilization in older adults and each will become more prevalent as older Canadians are expected to number approximately $9 million by 2031. The combined direct cost of dementia and falls for the Canadian Health System is over $4.9 billion per year. Establishing reliable and easy to obtain predictors to accurately identify MCI patients at highest risk of progressing to dementia is essential first, to determine who will benefit from additional and/or invasive testing and second, to implement preventative strategies, including cognitive training, physical exercises, and aggressive vascular risk factors correction to delay progression. Even a modest one-year delay in dementia incidence could save Canada $109 billion over 30 years.

The aim of this study is to compare personality and social cognition changes, including emotion detection and self-awareness, and neuroanatomical correlates in patients, and how that affects the caregiver-patient relationship.

An multi-stage mixed-method design will be employed to obtain both qualitative and quantitative data to address two study aims: (1) Evaluate and refine the delivery Reducing Disabilities in Alzheimer's Disease (RD- AD) training to advanced practice nurses and (2) Evaluate and refine the implementation of RD-AD by advanced practice nurses in their medical settings.

The objective of the ADDIA clinical Proof-of-Performance study is to validate the performance of ADDIA' blood biomarkers for diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). ADDIA clinical study is a multi-centre, non-interventional, prospective, proof-of-performance study with only one visit. About 800 well-characterized subjects will be recruited into 3 groups in 2:1:1 ratio, namely patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), patients with non-AD neurodegenerative disease (NAD) and 200 control subjects (healthy as compared to their age). 400 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD): 200 patients with mild AD, 200 patients with moderate-to-severe AD, 200 patients with non-Alzheimer's neurodegenerative diseases (NAD), 200 controls (healthy as compared to their age).

The purpose of this study is to investigate if behavioral intervention for dementia caregivers will decrease caregiver burden in caregivers of patients with dementia. This multicenter, randomized trial will be conducted with 80 dementia caregivers, who will be randomized into two groups. One group consists of 40 participants who will receive behavioral intervention and 40 who will not receive intervention (waitlist control). The waitlist control group will be also provided the same intervention after the intervention group has completed the intervention. The behavioral intervention consists of 90-min-session a day with an interval of two weeks for 2 months. The primary outcome measures are the changes in scores of Zaret's Burden Inventory and Philadelphia Geriatric Center for Moral Scale (PGCMS).

The investigators are conducting a study to try to improve our ability to identify older adults who are at high-risk for progression to Alzheimer's disease, several years before they have symptoms that might reduce their quality of life. The investigators believe they can increase the sensitivity of tests of memory and problem solving, by using a very small dose of a medication (scopolamine) that reduces the activity of the principal chemical system in the brain that is changing in the earliest stages of Alzheimer's disease. By pairing this "micro-dose" drug challenge (that is administered with a tiny needle placed just under the surface of the skin on the forearm), with our tests of memory and thinking, it is believed that the investigators can create a "stress test" that is very similar in concept to the use of the exercise treadmill to make the results of a heart EKG more sensitive to detect early disease, as a cardiac stress test for heart disease. The investigators want to create a similar stress test for Alzheimer's disease (AD).

The aim of this study is to characterize the deficit in critical components of personal identity (self-consciousness and social cognition) in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and fronto-temporal lobar dementia (FTLD), compared to healthy elderly, combining a neuropsychology and multi-podal neuroimaging study. We posit that the alteration of some aspects of self-consciousness (autobiographical memory, nosognosia, metacognition) and social cognition (theory of mind and facial) results in personality changes in the patients, primarily due to the alteration of self-consciousness in AD and to social cognition in FTLD.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common neurodegenerative disorder afflicting the elderly. Currently, some biochemical tests performed on Cerebrospinal Fluid (CSF) samples have demonstrated to discriminate to some extend between AD and non-AD individuals based on the levels of tau, phospho-tau or Aβ42. We aim to investigate newly identified proteins whose levels increase during the Braak Stages of AD that are accessible in other body fluids such as blood, urine or saliva. The detection of these proteins would allow performing simple tests in case its levels were confirmed to be associated with the AD pathology.