Active clinical trials for "Fibrosis"

The purpose of the study is to determine if miR200 family may serve as a biomarker of IPF.

Cystic Fibrosis (CF) is a disease that affects salt and water transport in multiple organs. Many CF patients suffer from abdominal pain and this could be due to intestinal inflammation. However, so far we do not know how many of the CF patients actually do have intestinal inflammation when looking at intestinal specimens. There is a proven connection between chronic inflammation and developing colorectal cancer and over the years more CF patients are developing colorectal cancer. Thus, it becomes increasingly important to look for the presence of intestinal inflammation in CF patients since early treatment may improve their symptoms and reduce the risk for colorectal cancer.

This phase I trial studies the side effects and best dose of defined green tea catechin extract and to see how well it works in preventing liver cancer in participants with cirrhosis. Higher levels of the molecule gamma-OHPdG may be found in participants with cirrhosis, which may mean a higher risk of the development of liver cancer. Defined green tea catechin extract may work better to lower levels of gamma-OHPdG and prevent the development of liver cancer.

HCC is the third leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide. Although surgical treatment may be effective in patients with HCC, the five-year survival rate is only 50-70%. Moreover, due to the lack of early diagnostic marker, most patients with HCC are often diagnosed in an advanced stage with poor prognosis. Therefore, there is an urgent need to further understand the possible aetiological factors and surgical treatment methods to improve the prognosis of patients with HCC. Liver transplantation is an ideal choice for patients with liver cirrhosis with HCC, which can significantly improve the postoperative survival rate. But the most serious problem facing such patients is the shortage of donor livers. In 2015, Norwegian scholars proposed a new surgical method, that is, resection and partial liver segment (2-3 segment) transplantation combined with delayed total hepatectomy can greatly alleviate the shortage of liver donors in the above-mentioned patients. Based on the experience of clinical operation, our center proposes and designs a clinical study of sequential adult left lateral lobe liver transplantation (SALT) for the treatment of patients with liver cirrhosis with HCC. On the basis of RAPID, the safety and efficacy of sequential adult left lateral lobe liver transplantation were evaluated for the above patients.

Diabetes is a major co-morbidity in pancreatic insufficient cystic fibrosis (PI-CF) and associated with worse outcomes. While reduced β-cell mass contributes to the insulin secretory defects that characterizes cystic fibrosis-related diabetes (CFRD), other modifiable determinants appear operative in the emergence and progression of abnormal glucose tolerance towards diabetes. Identifying interventions to preserve β-cell function are crucial for delaying and potentially preventing CFRD development. In this study, we hypothesize that weekly administration of the long-acting glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) agonist dulaglutide will improve defective early-phase insulin secretion and improve glucose tolerance during a mixed-meal tolerance test.

The Primary Objective: To observe and determine the safety and tolerance of allogeneic hepatocyte transplantation in patients with liver cirrhosis and to establish the maximum-tolerated dose (MTD) and evaluate the dose-limiting toxicities (DLTs). The Secondary Objective: To observe the therapeutic efficacy of allogeneic hepatocyte transplantation for liver cirrhosis.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) which is caused by the virus Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) has resulted in an ongoing global pandemic. It is unclear whether the relatively low number of reported cases of COVID-19 in people with CF (pwCF) is due to enhanced infection prevention practices or whether pwCF have protective genetic/immune factors. This study aims to prospectively assess the proportion of pwCF, including both adults and children with CF who have evidence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies over a two-year period. This study will also examine whether pwCF who have antibodies for SARS-CoV-2 have a different clinical presentation and what impact this has on their CF disease. The proposed study will recruit pwCF from paediatric and adult CF centres throughout the United Kingdom. Serological testing to detect antibodies will be performed on blood samples taken at month 0, 6, 12, 18 and 24 with additional time-points if bloodwork is available via normal clinical care. Clinical data on, lung function, CF-related medical history, pulmonary exacerbations, antibiotic use, and microbiology and vaccination receipt, will be collected during routine clinical assessments. Associations will be examined between socio-demographic and clinical variables and serologic testing. The investigators will also examine the effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection on clinical outcomes and analyse end-points to explore any age-related or gender-based differences, as well as subgroup analysis of outcomes in lung-transplant recipients and pwCF receiving cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) modulator therapies. As pwCF receive COVID-19 vaccination the investigators will perform a comparison of the development and progression of anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in pwCF following natural infection and vaccination SARS-CoV-2 over time.

Loss of skeletal muscle mass or sarcopenia is the most common and potentially reversible complication in cirrhosis that increases morbidity and mortality before, during and after liver transplantation. No proven treatments exist for the prevention or reversal of sarcopenia in cirrhosis, primarily because the mechanisms responsible for this are unknown. Based on compelling preliminary studies and those of the co investigator, investigators hypothesize that the mechanism of reduced skeletal muscle mass in cirrhosis is due to a myostatin mediated impaired mTOR (mechanistic target of rapamycin) signaling resulting in reduced protein synthesis and increased autophagy. Investigators further postulate that leucine, a direct stimulant of mTOR, will reverse the impaired mTOR phosphorylation in the skeletal muscle of cirrhotics. The consequent increase in protein synthesis reduced autophagy will result in an increase in skeletal muscle mass. Investigators will test these hypotheses by quantifying the response to acute and long term (3 month) administration of hydroxymethyl butyrate (HMB) enriched essential amino acid compared with an isonitrogenous isocaloric non-essential balanced amino acid mixture (does not stimulate protein synthesis) in cirrhotic patients. Fractional protein synthesis rate (FSR) in skeletal muscle, responses of the molecular regulatory pathways of skeletal muscle protein synthesis, and autophagy flux will be quantified in the acute and long term protocols. Tracer studies using L-[D5]-phenylalanine (Phe) as a primed constant infusion (prime 2µmol.kg-1.hr-1; constant 0.05 µmol.kg-1.hr-1) with and L [ring-D2] tyrosine, forearm plethysmography, and sequential skeletal muscle biopsies (total of 3 per study subject) will be used to quantify these outcomes. Anthropometric, clinical and body composition measures will be additional outcome measures for the long term intervention. Expression of regulatory signaling proteins, myostatin, IGF-1 (insulin like growth factor) , phospho-Akt, phospho-AMPK (activated protein kinase), phospho-mTOR and phospho-p70s6k will be quantified by Western immunoblots. Autophagy flux will be measured by quantifying expression of the autophagosome proteins.

Chronic liver disease is a major healthcare problem in Hong Kong and worldwide. The diagnosis of liver fibrosis and inflammation in patients with chronic liver disease has important prognostic and therapeutic implications. The current gold standard to evaluate and stage the severity of liver fibrosis and inflammation is based on liver biopsies, which are invasive and impractical for screening and monitoring the disease. The existing non-invasive methods still have significant limitations to meet the challenge. Magnetic resonance effect can be used to obtain the molecular-level information on the biochemical properties of human tissues. The investigators will develop non-invasive quantitative MRI technologies to evaluate and stage liver fibrosis and inflammation. Our approaches are based on the endogenous contrast mechanism and thus do not need to inject an MRI contrast agent. Our approaches can be implemented on a regular MRI scanner and do not need any extra hardware. To enable the technology for routine clinical use, the investigators will develop fully automated post-processing techniques for the proposed MRI acquisition approaches. The investigators will perform multi-center clinical studies in Hong Kong and mainland China to validate our imaging measurements by histopathologic results from liver biopsies on patient cohorts.

This is a single-arm clinical trial evaluating the efficacy and safety of left atrial isolation achieved by catheter ablation in patients with persistent atrial fibrillation with severe atrial fibrosis.