Active clinical trials for "Anemia, Sickle Cell"

Sickle Cell Anemia (SCA) occurs in 300,000 newborns per year in the world, with 150,000 affected births in Nigeria, alone. With improvement in survival for children with SCA in both high- and low-resource countries, neurological morbidity is an emerging significant public health challenge, particularly in countries with a high rate of sickle cell disease (SCD). Both silent cerebral infarcts (SCI) and overt strokes result in significant neurological morbidity and premature death. Five NIH-funded randomized controlled trials (RCT) demonstrated that regular blood transfusion or hydroxyurea therapy are efficacious treatments for primary and secondary stroke prevention in children with SCA. Despite the observation that at least 99% of children with SCA in high-resource settings reach adulthood, and approximately 60% of adults will experience one or more strokes (~50% with SCI and ~10% with overt strokes) and the high disease-burden in Nigeria, the prevalence and incidence rates of new and recurrent stroke (overt and silent strokes)have not been collected systematically in children and young adults (16-25 years old) with SCA. In the last decade, there has been growing use of stroke registries in economically advanced nations, particularly for epidemiological purposes of trend analysis, clinical effectiveness, compliance to guidelines, assessment of implementation, adoption of novel techniques, and quality improvement process. For the first time in clinical centers in Nigeria, the Investigators will conduct an observational epidemiological study to document the prevalence and track the incidence of new and recurrent strokes in children and young adults with SCD. The Investigators will create a stroke registry referred to as the Afolabi Stroke Registry for Children and Young Adults with Sickle Cell Disease in Nigeria. The overall purpose of the stroke registry is to document the natural history of SCD in a low-resource setting and to improve the quality of the care of children and young adults with SCD living in Nigeria.

Allogeneic blood and marrow transplantation remains the only viable cure for children who suffer from many serious non-malignant hematological diseases. Transplantation, however, carries a high risk of fatal complications. Much of the risk stems from the use of high dose radiation and chemotherapy for conditioning, the treatment administered just prior to transplant that eliminates the patients' marrow and immune system, effectively preventing rejection of the donors' cells. Attempts to make blood and marrow transplantation safer for children with non-malignant diseases by using lower doses of radiation and chemotherapy have largely failed because of a high rate of graft rejection. In many such cases, it is likely that the graft is rejected because the recipient is sensitized to proteins on donor cells, including bone marrow cells, by blood transfusions. The formation of memory immune cells is a hallmark of sensitization, and these memory cells are relatively insensitive to chemotherapy and radiation. Alefacept, a drug used to treat psoriasis, on the other hand, selectively depletes these cells. The investigators are conducting a pilot study to begin to determine whether incorporating alefacept into a low dose conditioning regimen can effectively mitigate sensitization and, thereby, prevent rejection of allogeneic blood and marrow transplants for multiply transfused children with non-malignant hematological diseases.

Majority of patients who are eligible for allogeneic HSCT for cure of severe sickle cell disease lack a matched family donor. This study aims for cure of sickle cell disease by performing unrelated donor (outside family) allogeneic HSCT. Donors or unrelated cord blood units will be selected from the NMDP database. It is designed to estimate the safety of a novel reduced toxicity, yet an immunosuppressive and myeloablative preparative regimen. This is meant for patients <21 years old who have severe complications from sickle cell and do not have matched sibling donors in the family to undergo stem cell transplant. Patients will undergo transplant using unrelated donor stem cells after receiving the protocol therapy. They will be followed for 1 year to monitor for engraftment of donor cells and complications like graft versus host disease (GVHD), infections and death.

We hope to gain valuable information about the safety, success of engraftment, and rates of complications using alternate donor transplantation for children with severe SCD. Crucial information will be also collected about late effects from alternate donor BMT sickle cell, providing valuable information to clinicians and families making decisions among interventions for children with severe sickle cell disease. If successful, alternate donor transplantation in this setting could pave the way to offering curative treatment to many more patients with severe SCD.

RATIONALE: Giving low doses of chemotherapy, such as fludarabine and cyclophosphamide, and total-body irradiation before a donor bone marrow transplant helps stop the growth of abnormal cells. It also helps stop the patient's immune system from rejecting the donor's stem cells. When the healthy stem cells from a donor are infused into the patient they may help the patient's bone marrow make stem cells, red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets. Sometimes the transplanted cells from a donor can make an immune response against the body's normal cells. Giving sirolimus and mycophenolate mofetil after transplant may stop this from happening. PURPOSE: This phase II trial is studying how well giving fludarabine and cyclophosphamide together with total-body irradiation followed by a donor bone marrow transplant works in treating patients with sickle cell anemia and other blood disorders.

Patients are being asked to participate in this study because they have severe sickle cell anemia (SCD) with or without the beta thalassemia trait. Sickle cell anemia is an illness where the red blood cells change shape and can clog up blood vessels. This keeps the body from getting the oxygen it needs. Thalassemia is when the body does not make enough hemoglobin, something that helps the oxygen get to the places it needs to go in the body. The patient may or may not need to get regular blood transfusions (getting more blood) to improve their quality of life (feel better) and prevent organ damage (problems with the brain, heart, lung, kidney, and gonad, for example.). The transfusions can also cause problems, including iron overload (too much iron in the blood), which can be fatal (patients can die) without regular deferoxamine shots. Even with the best usual treatments, people with thalassemia or SCD die sooner. There is no proven cure. We would like to treat patients using bone marrow transplantation, a treatment that has been used for people with SCD. The transplant uses healthy "matched" bone marrow. This comes from a brother or sister who does not have sickle cell disease or severe thalassemia. If the treatment works, the sickle cell disease or thalassemia may be cured. This treatment has been used to treat patients with sickle cell disease or thalassemia. It has worked in most cases. We hope, but cannot promise, that the transplanted marrow will make healthy cells, and patients will not have sickle cell disease or severe thalassemia anymore. We do not know what effect this treatment will have on the damage that has already been done by the disease. Finding that out is the main reason for this study. Currently, very little has been reported about organ function after bone marrow transplants in patients with sickle cell anemia.

The study will assess the effect of bosentan on pulmonary vascular resistance and exercise capacity in sickle cell disease (SCD) patients diagnosed with pulmonary arterial hypertension. It consists of 3 phases: Screening, Treatment and Follow-up. During the Screening visit, the study doctor will decide if patients meet the study requirements. All potential patients will have a diagnosis of increased pulmonary artery pressures that is shown by right heart catheterization conducted shortly prior to start of study treatment. Patients will be asked to perform exercise capacity test (walking as far as possible for 6 minutes). Following the Baseline visit, the treatment phase consists of 4 additional clinic visits during which the good and bad effects of the drug are reviewed and exercise capacity test will be repeated. Patients will be treated for 16 weeks. Blood samples will be collected every month, or more often, if needed. At the end of the study, patients will be asked to repeat the right heart catheterization and exercise capacity test. After completion of the study, patients will have the option of enrolling in a long-term follow-up study where all patients will receive active drug. Patients electing not to participate in the extension study will be followed up for safety assessments for about 28 days after the end of the study treatment.

The purpose of this study is to compare ketorolac, a potent, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), with ibuprofen, a commonly used NSAID, for the treatment of the painful crisis of sickle cell disease (SCD).

A Study to Evaluate the Safety and Efficacy of IMR-687 in Subjects with Sickle Cell Disease

Despite the well-documented benefits of hydroxyurea (HU) therapy in decreasing morbidity and mortality in youth with Sickle cell disease (SCD), pediatric HU adherence rates range as low as 49% and lead to discontinuation of HU regimens in 8-20%. In addition, treatment non-adherence may lead to unnecessary increases in medication dosage resulting from erroneous assumption that a patient is non-responsive to treatment (versus non-adherent to the regimen as prescribed). Given the detrimental effects of non-adherence, assessment of and intervention for HU non-adherence is essential to improving health outcomes in the pediatric SCD population. Electronic adherence monitoring is widely considered the "gold standard" in objective adherence measurement. These monitors provide continuous, real- time records of medication adherence and reveal problematic behavior patterns, including underdosing, overdosing, delayed dosing, "drug holidays," and "white coat" adherence. Overall, electronic adherence measures are considered valid, reliable, and accurate, with clear advantages over pharmacy refill records, physician estimates and self-report measures. The primary purpose of this pilot study is to determine the use of the AdhereTech as a feasible and valid measure of HU adherence in pediatric SCD. Primary Objective Estimate the association between HU adherence as measured by the AdhereTech device to a) caregiver-report, b) youth-report, c) lab values, d) pill- count, and e) Medication Possession Ratio (MPR) adherence measures Secondary Objectives Estimate the rate of consent to the study, the rate of AdhereTech device use, the rate of AdhereTech device failure, and the perceived acceptability of using the AdhereTech device, as reported by caregivers and youth