Active clinical trials for "Brain Diseases"

Children frequently present with altered or reduced consciousness levels to emergency departments. By using EEG monitoring, subclinical seizure activity may be detected, leading to earlier pharmacological intervention and improved outcomes. Post-ictal phases that may be interpreted as seizure activity may become less over-treated. A feasibility study will ascertain if EEG monitoring can be applied successfully in this cohort, within a specified time period, obtaining minimum artefact (defined as < 25% artefact). EEG recordings will not be used to guide clinical management during this feasibility study.

The study aims to investigate the impact of 2 nutritional patterns on high-frequency episodic migraine. Subjects enrolled will be randomized in two arms: a) very-low-calorie-ketogenic-diet (VLCKD), b) hypocaloric balanced non ketogenic-diet (HBD).

Immunotherapy with chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy can cause immune effector cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome (ICANS). However, the molecular mechanisms leading to ICANS are not well understood. In this study, the investigators plan to examine the role of microglia as the primary parenchymal immune cells of the central nervous system (CNS) during ICANS in human samples. The samples will be analyzed using imaging-mass-cytometry-based analysis (IMC). Single-cell data will be obtained through machine learning supervised segmentation of IMC data. Single-cell marker expression in all cells and in microglia (Iba1+ cells) will be analyzed in patients with ICANS.

This trial is collaboration between Mayo Clinic, Second Opinion Health (Simon Bloch, simon@somobilehealth.com 408-981-3814) and Allergan. Mayo Clinic investigators are conducting the clinical trial, Second Opinion Health is providing the software for use in the trial (Migraine Alert app for data collection, analysis and machine learning algorithms), and Allergan is providing funding. The investigators hypothesize that the use of a mobile phone app and Fitbit wearable to collect daily headache diary data, exposure/trigger data and physiologic data will predict the occurrence of migraine attacks with high accuracy. The objective of the trial is to assess the ability to use daily exposure/trigger and symptom data, as well as physiologic data (collected by Fitbit) to create individual predictive migraine models to accurately predict migraine attacks in individual patients via a mobile phone app.

Controlled Hypothermia has become the standard of care for neonates with moderate to severe HIE. Ampicillin and aminoglycosides are drugs that are universally used for the treatment of suspected neonatal sepsis, which may or may not be responsible for the etiology of HIE. Currently, medication dosage regimens are not altered in the setting of CH. A better understanding of the effects of our interventions on this unique population may help us tailor our therapy to the specific circumstances of the patient

This is a retrospective study in adult patients with cirrhosis and grade 3 or 4 HE (West Haven Criteria) to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of lactulose retention enema in the treatment of deep grade HE (West Haven Criteria). The study will be conducted retrospectively in a multi center of a multispecialty tertiary care hospital in India, in which lactulose retention enema is the mainstay of management of cirrhotic patients with grade 3 or 4 HE (West Haven criteria). Dosing of lactulose retention enema in this study will be done according to the dosing described for rectal administration of lactulose (India): 300ml of lactulose mixed with 700ml of potable water to be used as a retention enema; the enema is to be retained for 30-60 minutes and repeated every 4-6 hours until the patient is able to take oral medication. This treatment regime is also the standard protocol of management of deep grade HE (West Haven criteria) in the study centers. The standard treatment protocol of deep grade HE (West Haven criteria) of the study centers will also ensure that all known contraindications of lactulose will be respected before administration of lactulose retention enema to the study patients. The retrospective hospital records of the patient population of interest within the past 6 months will be identified, and these records will be used to collect data required for analysis.

Hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) is a serious birth complication due to systemic asphyxia which occurs in about 20 of 1,000 full-term infants and nearly 60% of premature newborns. Between 10-60% of babies who exhibit HIE die during the newborn period and up to 25% of the HIE survivors have permanent neurodevelopmental handicaps in the form of cerebral palsy, mental retardation, learning disabilities, or epilepsy. HIE also has a significant financial impact on the health care system. In the state of Florida, the total cost for initial hospitalization is $161,000 per HIE patient admitted, but those costs don't take into account the life-long costs. Current monitoring and evaluation of HIE, outcome prediction, and efficacy of hypothermia treatment rely on a combination of a neurological exam, ultrasound, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and electroencephalography (EEG). However, these methods do a poor job in identifying non-responders to hypothermia. MRI requires transport of the neonate with a requisite 40-45 min scan, which is not appropriate for unstable neonates. Moreover, the amplitude integrated EEG (aEEG), a common bedside monitoring technique currently used in these patients to assess candidates and predict outcomes prior to hypothermia, can be adversely affected by hypothermia itself and the patient may not appear to improve until re-warming. Consequently, the development of a simple, inexpensive, non-invasive, rapid biochemical test is essential to identify candidates for therapeutic hypothermia, to distinguish responders from non-responders and to assess outcome. This research is the first step needed to treat neonates with HIE employing a personalized medical approach using serum proteins GFAP and UCH-L1 as biomarkers and by monitoring neonates responses to therapeutic hypothermia. These biomarkers will aid in the direct care by providing a rapid test to predict outcomes and select candidates who are likely to benefit from therapeutic hypothermia and gauge a response to the neuroprotective intervention.

The potential long-term effects of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) are poorly understood. Repeated concussions have been associated with an elevated incidence of Alzheimer's disease (AD) along with a reduced age of onset. As repetitive TBI has been studied, a syndrome has now been identified: chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). There are growing concerns about the long-term neurologic consequences of head impact exposure from routine participation in contact sports (e.g., boxing, football). Brain autopsies of athletes with confirmed CTE have demonstrated tau-immunoreactive neurofibrillary tangles and neuropil threads (known as tauopathy). The relationship between exposure to repetitive head impact and the subsequent development of chronic neurodegenerative disease has not been established. Further, as the diagnosis of CTE (defined by the presence of tauopathy) is presently made after death at autopsy, clinical tools and biomarkers for detecting it remain to be defined. With the advent of FDA-approved PET amyloid imaging, clinicians and researchers are now able to estimate plaque density in the brains of living patients. However, there are critical limitations to amyloid imaging. Current evidence suggests that markers of the presence and severity of tauopathy may be able to address these limitations. The study will utilize both [18F] Florbetapir and [18F]-T807 PET imaging to investigate amyloid and tau accumulation in subjects with a history of concussions. In order to determine whether problems with cognition and memory are seen within the populations defined for the study, the researchers will administer a core battery of neurocognitive testing. This battery will assess cognitive abilities commonly affected by TBI, including processing speed, reaction time, new problem-solving, executive functions, attention and concentration, and learning and memory. These tests, in conjunction with the imaging, will be able to determine whether regional brain activity is associated with specific cognitive problems. The researchers will obtain PET and neurocognitive data in 3 cohorts: subjects with a history of TBIs, subjects with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and no TBI history, and healthy controls. The investigators aim to determine whether individuals with TBI are on the same trajectory of neurodegenerative disease seen in AD or in CTE. Because of the overlap in clinical/cognitive and some behavioral symptoms in AD and CTE, an additional biomarker tool is needed to prevent misdiagnosis. Accurate diagnosis is crucial in order to provide patients with appropriate treatment.

The goal of this study is to assess [18F]MNI-777 PET imaging as a tool to detect tau pathology in the brain of individuals who carry a clinical diagnosis of a tauopathy, including: Alzheimer's Disease (AD),Parkinson's disease (PD) Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP), chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and Frontal Temporal Dementia (FTD) and age- and gender-matched healthy subjects.

The main goal of this study is to quantitatively assess the sucking and feeding activity of infants at high risk of neurological impairment (preterm infants and term infants at risk of abnormal neurodevelopment) during oral sucking and feeding and correlate it with their underlying neurological impairment for the early diagnosis of brain injury.