Active clinical trials for "Huntington Disease"

This is a prospective investigation of the effects of Laughter therapy (LT) on perceived stress, self-efficacy, mood and other wellness measures in people with the following neurological conditions: Alzheimer's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, brain injury, Huntington's Disease, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's Disease, post-stroke, spinal cord injury.

The purpose of this study is primarily to assess the ability of a music therapy program to improve holistically the psychological, somatic, and social symptoms of patients with Huntington 's disease (HD). We hope to demonstrate the benefits of applying music therapy interventions to the management methods of HD, thus paving the way for the development of an effective music therapy program for individuals with HD.

Brain stimulation in movement disorders This trial will explore the effects of very gentle electrical stimulation of the brain in patients with movement disorders. Other studies have already been carried out and have shown that brain stimulation may help to improve mental abilities and the symptoms of conditions such as depression and stroke. The investigators will show whether this method can help with symptoms such as memory and concentration problems in patients with movement disorder who have mild to moderate problems with these mental abilities. The investigators will also look at the effects of brain stimulation on movement symptoms and mood. These people will be compared to healthy people to help us understand whether brain stimulation works differently in healthy people and people with brain disorders. This trial is being carried out at one centre in Birmingham. It is scheduled to begin in September 2014 and will last for up to five years. As the study commences it is being funded by Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust and University of Birmingham. The investigators plan to recruit up to a maximum of 200 individuals in this study.

This study will evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of a clinic-based physical activity coaching intervention in people with pre-manifest and early stage Huntington's Disease (HD). Fourteen individuals with premanifest and early stage HD will be recruited to participate in a 4 month coaching intervention. Feasibility will be assessed by recruitment and retention rates, and acceptability will be assessed by participant interviews. Participants will also be evaluate at baseline and following the coaching intervention to explore preliminary efficacy in terms of physical activity, self efficacy, disease-specific motor and cognitive function, walking endurance and strength.

This is a phase II feasibility, safety, tolerability and preliminary efficacy study of an e-Health application versus in-person nutritional counseling to maintain or increase weight in patients with neurodegenerative diseases including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Parkinson's Disease (PD) and Huntington's disease (HD). Primary Objectives include the feasibility, safety, tolerability and efficacy of an e-Health application to maintain or increase body weight compared to in-person nutritional counseling. Secondary Objectives are to measure the number of calories required to maintain or increase body weight in neurodegenerative diseases at all stages of the disease. Tertiary Objectives are to test the effects of an e-Health application compared to in-person nutritional counseling on disease progression using the ALSFRS-R, UHDRS or UDysRS, on survival, and on quality of life using the PROMIS SF v1.1 scale.

Dimebon will not exhibit abuse potential when compared to placebo or a positive control (alprazolam).

To estimate the absorption, safety, and tolerability of a dimebon transdermal solution relative to the dimebon immediate release oral formulation.

Cognitive impairments, especially deficits of executive function, have been well documented as a core and early feature in Huntington's disease (HD). Cognitive impairments can be considerably burdensome and devastating for people and families affected by HD. Computerised cognitive training interventions that focus on improving executive function present a potentially exciting non-pharmacological treatment option. Novel work conducted in mouse models of HD, has demonstrated that cognitive training, administered from an early stage in the disease, can improve motor performance at an older age, even in the absence of further training in the intervening time. This represents proof of principle in an animal model of HD that cognitive training can improve HD disease symptoms. Improvements associated with executive function training have also been reported in a clinical setting in a variety of neurodegenerative diseases. For example, cognitive training, can improve executive function as people age, and training specifically focused on tasks of executive function has been shown to improve both cognitive and motor outcomes in neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's disease (PD) and Alzheimer's disease (AD). Therefore, this study is a feasibility study which aims to establish proof of principle for using computerised cognitive training in people with HD. The investigators propose to determine the feasibility, acceptability and gather preliminary evidence of the effectiveness of a cognitive training intervention programme, targeted for people with HD. The investigators will also aim to investigate the most appropriate outcome measures to use in this study and gather feedback on the cognitive training intervention. The investigators will also establish proof of concept via the study of brain structure and function, using MRI scanning techniques. The computerised cognitive training software and the associated outcome measures will be investigated, taking into account the views of people and families who are affected by HD. A randomised feasibility study of computerised cognitive training for people with HD will then be conducted. Participants who are randomised to the cognitive training intervention group will be asked to complete a cognitive training intervention utilising "HAPPYneuron" software. Participants in the intervention group will be asked to complete the cognitive training programme for a minimum of 30 minutes, 3 times a week for the 12 week study duration. Participants in the control group will not receive any cognitive training and will be asked to continue as normal, however they will have home visits to control for the confounding effect of social interaction. Additional monitoring and prompting for the intervention group, will be conducted via email, text or telephone reminders (as preferred by the participant) and home visits. The motor and cognitive function of participants will be assessed at the beginning and end of the study, using a range of motor and cognitive assessments. Additional cognitive measurements will be recorded as part of the HAPPYneuron programme throughout the cognitive training intervention, such as accuracy and response time measures of particular computer games. MRI scans (optional) will be conducted at the beginning and end of the study to identify any structural changes in the brain that may be associated with the cognitive training intervention. As part of the feasibility and acceptability assessment, participants, family members and carers will be invited to complete a semi-structured interview at the end of the study, if consent is obtained, focusing on using this type of software as a home based therapeutic intervention.

In this project investigators will evaluate the benefits of contemporary dance training using a comprehensive test battery combining standard neuropsychological batteries, psychological questionnaires on emotion, empathy and quality of life, structural magnet-resonance tomography (MRI), as well as psychophysical tests on movement recognition and agency, the sense of being in control of one's own movement. For 10 years now two experienced dancer-choreographers lead dance workshops for people with Huntington's Disease (HD) and their family and caregivers in Paris. This project will evaluate objectively the effects these workshops have, by assessing a new group of 18 patients and their partners and caregivers before and after 8 month of weekly dance training. People with HD are troubled by involuntary movements, of which they are however not accurately aware, but moreover they become impaired at recognising instrumental actions in others. It is well known that observing somebody else's action and executing the same action rest on a common neural network. This might mean that improving one's own action execution can improve the observation and understanding of others' actions in turn. Here, investigators will investigate both the impact the movement impairments caused by HD might have on patients themselves as well as on their partners and caregivers, as a consequence of the fact that own and other action representations are shared. After 8 months of contemporary dance training, both groups will be tested again, in order to establish if both action execution (self) and perception (in others) have improved. Other recent psychophysics and brain imaging experiments have demonstrated how the sense of agency is composed from external cues (for example sound) of the consequences of movements, and from internal sensorimotor information that result from the action plan. Importantly, in HD the latter input might be impaired, but this has never been systematically tested. Making use of a psychophysics paradigm disentangling the two cues to agency investigators first monitor the sense of their own movement in HD, and further assess the changes in agency and in the role of these cues to agency after eight months of contemporary dance practice. Finally investigators will monitor the structural brain changes accompanying this progress, comparing the brain before and after regular dance practice and correlating action recognition psychophysics measures of agency with these changes. In sum, this project has a double impact. Firstly it will scientifically evaluate the impact of dance on the normal but especially the brain affected by a neurodegenerative disease that causes movement impairments, and establish its effect on behaviour and wellbeing. Secondly it will evaluate in patient partners and caregivers how they represent the patients' as well as their own movements and how this changes with dance practice.

This study will evaluate the potential for a drug-drug interaction of Dimebon with ketoconazole and omeprazole, potent inhibitors of the drug metabolizing enzymes CYP3A4 and CYP2C19, respectively.