Active clinical trials for "Disease Progression"

This was a prospective, open-label study with no participant randomization. Treatment for aHUS was observational and at the discretion of the treating physician. The purpose of this study was to assess disease manifestations of complement-mediated thrombotic microangiopathy (TMA) and evaluate potential clinical predictors of disease manifestations and progression in participants with aHUS with or without eculizumab treatment in the clinical setting.

The purpose of this study is to find out more about some of the unusual chemicals (called oligosaccharides) that can occur naturally as a result of processes in the body. Researchers want to look at how these chemicals change with time and how they change between different patients with MPSIVA. These unusual chemicals were recently discovered in the urine from patients with MPSIVA. The investigators would like to study these chemicals before a specific enzyme replacement therapy is used. If the investigators understand how these chemicals change, the investigators may be able to use them to monitor this condition in the near future as well as help doctors know whether certain therapies work well in their patients.

Acute heart failure (AHF) is defined as a gradual or rapid change in heart failure (HF) signs and symptoms, such as shortness of breath (also called dyspnea or breathlessness), leg swelling, fatigue, breathlessness with exertion, trouble sleeping flat at night, and weight gain resulting in a need for urgent therapy. AHF results in over 1 million hospitalizations every year, resulting in an enormous public health burden. Approximately 1/3rd of patients will either be re-hospitalized or die within three months, and the resultant financial costs are large. As such, improving outcomes for AHF patients is critically important. Shortness of breath is the most common reason why patients with AHF present to the ER. As such, understanding how severe this symptom is, how much it improves with current treatments is very important to both patients and physicians. The purpose of this study is to determine the degree to which your shortness of breath improves during the first few days of hospitalization and its association with how fast you are breathing.

This is a piloting study using continuous motor training provided via whole body-controlled video games (exergames) to establish proof-of-concept evidence that such training leads to motor and neural changes in pre-manifest subjects with spinocerebellar ataxias (SCA).

SARS-CoV-2 induces over-production of inflammatory cytokines, and especially interleukin-6 (IL-6). The apparently strong association between blood levels of inflammaory cytokines and SARS-CoV-2 disease severity has led clinicians to evaluate the administration of steroids or anti-IL-6 antagonists in severely ill patients. As of this day, biomarkers capable of predicting clinical disease progression in Covid-19 patients with mild-to-moderate symptoms have not yet been formally identified. Identifying such markers and evaluating their predictive value may be exploited to guide patient care management, and as such forms the core objective of this proposal. Because of strong inter-individual variations in the ability of innate immune cells to produce cytokines, the hypothesis formulate and intend to test is that innate IL-6 responsiveness varies between recently infected Covid-19 patients and could predict disease outcome. To test this hypothesis, the investigator propose to follow recently infected kidney transplant patients with moderate Covid-19 symptoms. These patients stand a higher risk to progress to severe disease. The staff plan to collect a blood sample in these patients using a system whereby ex vivo cytokine production is initiated in the very same blood collection tube without prior separation and centrifugation, thus reducing labour and operator bias. After incubation with or without known innate immune stimuli, the cell-free phase from each collection-culture tube will be assayed for IL-6 content. Associations between IL-6 content and disease outcome (encephalopathy, transfer to acute care or death) will be determined in 115 Covid-19 kidney transplant patients with moderate symptoms followed in 9 centers.

Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) is an immune mediated chronic intestinal condition. It includes ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn's disease(CD). probiotics have been shown to be effective in varried clinical conditions ranging fron infantile diarrhea, necrotizing enterocolitis,helicobacter pylori infections, etc.

SARS-CoV-2 induces over-production of inflammatory cytokines, and especially interleukin-6 (IL-6). The apparently strong association between blood levels of inflammaory cytokines and SARS-CoV-2 disease severity has led clinicians to evaluate the administration of steroids or anti-IL-6 antagonists in severely ill patients. As of this day, biomarkers capable of predicting clinical disease progression in Covid-19 patients with mild-to-moderate symptoms have not yet been formally identified. Identifying such markers and evaluating their predictive value may be exploited to guide patient care management, and as such forms the core objective of this proposal. Because of strong inter-individual variations in the ability of innate immune cells to produce cytokines, the hypothesis the investigators formulate and intend to test is that innate IL-6 responsiveness varies between recently infected Covid-19 patients and could predict disease outcome. To test this hypothesis, the investigators propose to follow recently infected chronic haemodialysis patients with moderate Covid-19 symptoms. These patients stand a higher risk to progress to severe disease. The investigators plan to collect a blood sample in these patients using a system whereby ex vivo cytokine production is initiated in the very same blood collection tube without prior separation and centrifugation, thus reducing labour and operator bias. After incubation with or without known innate immune stimuli, the cell-free phase from each collection-culture tube will be assayed for IL-6 content. Associations between IL-6 content and disease outcome (encephalopathy, transfer to acute care or death) will be determined in 115 Covid-19 chronic haemodialysis patients with moderate symptoms followed in 9 centers.

Parkinson's disease (PD) affects between 1% and 2% of the world's population aged 60 and older; in Europe the prevalence is around 150 PD patients per 100,000 individuals. PD is classically characterized by a symptomatic triad that includes rest tremor, akinesia and hypertonia and although the motor expression of the symptoms involves mainly the limbs, the muscles implicated in speech production are also subject to specific dysfunctions. Motor speech disorders, so-called dysarthria, can thus be developed by PD patients. The main objective of our project is to evaluate the physiological parameters (acoustics), perceptual markers (intelligibility) and psychosocial impact of dysarthric speech in PD, in the context of language (French vs. Portuguese) modulations. Acoustic parameters are expected to be physiologically-based, linked with the motoric aspects of dysarthric speech. The same degree of impairment of such parameters should be associated with the pathology and be present universally in all patients, even if they speak different languages; that should be also the case of prosodic markers, whereas impairment of speech intelligibility may participate to the psychosocial impact in communication alteration. PD patients will be enrolled in the study in Aix-en-Provence (N = 60) and Lisbon (N = 60). Their global motor disability will be assessed with dedicated clinical rating scales, without (off) and with (on) pharmacological treatment. Two groups of 60 healthy age-matched volunteers will provide the normal reference for between-group comparisons. Along with the off and on medication clinical examinations, several speech tasks will be recorded. Moreover, speech organ functions will also be assessed during the same examination. The psychosocial impact of dysarthria will be evaluated via self-questionnaires; it will be analysed a posteriori, as well as the speech intelligibility evaluation, and both will strengthen the overall speech assessments. This global investigation will represent a unique opportunity to provide the most precise and reliable description of PD patients' speech and its impacts on intelligibility and quality of life. Challenging and interdisciplinary aspects are combined in our project, which original cross-linguistic approach involves an international collaboration definitely new in the field of motor speech disorders.

This study will determine the feasibility and effectiveness of a monthly social support group along with a weekly peer-to-peer meeting in improving perceived level of social support, diabetes distress, and A1c profiles in patients with Type II diabetes mellitus, compared with standard care offered at British Columbia Diabetes (BC Diabetes).

The purpose of this study is determine the ability of bedide ultrasound performed in the Emergency Department and Outpatient Department can predict the severity of disease during a Dengue Fever outbreak in children, in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Our hypothesis is that the presence of gallbladder wall thickening and/or pleural effusions in children correlates with progression to Dengue hemorrhagic fever and Dengue shock. In addition, we hypothesize that sonographic imaging of pediatric patients presenting to the emergency department with a fever during a Dengue fever outbreak will change management and disposition.