Active clinical trials for "Parkinson Disease"

The ability to predict sensory effects of people's own motor actions is a key component of Human action realization. Recent studies revealed this anticipation process to be involved in early and late stages of voluntary actions. Nevertheless, the question whether the action-effect anticipation is impacted or not by "motor pathologies", such as the Parkinson's disease, remains unclear. The current study is aimed to clarify this issue by using a subliminal priming paradigm in patients with Parkinson's disease and in matched control participants. Indeed, subliminal primes corresponding to visual action-effects are displayed at different time points before the actions' execution. Results should allow to determine whether or not the action-effect prediction is impaired at different stages of voluntary action in patients with Parkinson's disease.

Clinical assessments can only offer a snapshot of daily life with Parkinson's Disease, while wearable devices can offer immensely more information that can improve the understanding of this disease. With recent advancements in technology, investigators are now able to use watch-like devices to more effectively measure the symptoms of Parkinson's Disease outside of the doctor's office. The present study is designed to evaluate the usability, applicability, and interpretability of an electronic VA Patient Motor Diary (eON-OFF), MC10 BioStampRC actigraphy sensor, APDM actigraphy sensor and the GENEActiv Watch in persons with Parkinson's Disease. There is no placebo/control group.

Study to obtain information about the co-operation of the different physician-colleagues in the treatment of patients with Parkinson's disease, both in private practices and clinics and about the primary treatment strategies in the pharmacotherapy of Parkinson's disease and to collect data on the tolerability of Sifrol® in ambulatory patients suffering from Parkinson's disease under routing conditions

In a recent study it was found that neurologist care for Parkinson's provides a 20% reduction in nursing home placement, hip fracture, and death (Willis 2011). However, as the authors recognized, the investigators don't know what it is about expert care that delivers this benefit. The Parkinson's Foundation's Quality Improvement Initiative was designed to identify the components of great care that yield great outcomes. By capturing demographics, clinical interventions and outcomes over time from multiple centers across the U.S, Canada and internationally, the best care practices from different clinics and different healthcare systems will be analyzed.

The primary objective of this study is to obtain detailed clinical information and biologic specimens from subjects with PD toward the ultimate end of identifying a biomarker of PD. Because of the inherent difficulties of using clinical outcome measures to assess disease modification, the identification of biomarkers of PD is of paramount importance. The ideal PD biomarker would be one that is easily assayed in a convenient biological sample, varies proportionally with disease severity, is abnormal during the pre-symptomatic phase of the illness, and is unaffected by drugs or other interventions used to treat PD. The existence of a sensitive biomarker with these properties would enable much more effective disease modifying research that would likely be able to take advantage of smaller and potentially shorter trials.

Parkinson's disease is caused by a reduction of dopamine causing motor deficits. The investigators are studying how exercise can help PD patients by increasing dopamine release in an area of the brain that coordinates movement, the striatum. The investigators will enroll PD patients into two groups; one group will complete a 12-week aerobic exercise program and the other will complete a 12-week control program including yoga and stretching only. The investigators will measure changes in dopamine release before and after either 12-week intervention. Subjects will complete motor and cognitive questionnaires in addition to functional magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography neuroimaging.

AFF008E is set-up to assess the long term effects of the 4 PD01A vaccinations that have been applied during AFF008 with regard to safety as well as immunological-, radiological and clinical activity. Accordingly, during AFF008E, no further vaccine dose will be applied. Instead, patients who were participating in AFF008 will be assessed for another 52 weeks at the occasion of 4 quarterly visits. This is offered to patients who received PD01A vaccinations but also to the patients who served as controls in AFF008. Thus, AFF008E will ensure standardized and controlled management of individuals who have received PD01A as part of AFF008, the Phase I study analyzing for the first time in humans this first in class candidate.

The cause of Parkinson's disease (PD) is currently unknown. Both environmental and genetic factors have been found to contribute to PD pathogenesis. The pathology of PD is distributed throughout the entire nervous system including the central, peripheral, and enteric nervous system. There is evidence that inflammation plays a major role in neurodegeneration in PD. In both the striatum and substantia nigra of PD patients activated microglia were found and proinflammatory cytokines (TNF, IL-1B, IL-6, iNOS) are increased in the CSF. An inflammation-driven animal model has emerged and has been widely accepted as a model of the disease based on lipopolysaccharide (LPS) induced neurotoxicity. LPS is an endotoxin found on the outer membrane of gram negative bacteria and humans are exposed to LPS through the intestinal tract. The intestinal tract and thus the enteric nervous system serve as a conduit to the central nervous system. It has been posited that the inflammatory process could gain access to the lower brainstem via the vagal nerve and then ascend through the basal mid- and forebrain until it reaches the cerebral cortex, producing various pre-motor and motor symptoms of PD along the way. LPS may be one of the inflammatory triggers involved in this process. Systemic exposure to bacterial endotoxin can be determined by measuring plasma LPS binding protein (LBP). A study of 9 patients with early PD (median Hoehn and Yahr stage 2) and age matched controls found that the PD subjects had a significantly lower mean level of plasma LBP compared to control subjects. The aim of the research plan is to establish LBP as a potential biomarker for PD across a spectrum of disease severity.

The purpose of this study is to provide objective measurements of abnormal movements of the body in correlation with neural activity of the brain and track how these change over time. This may allow for the development of objective evaluation of the neural activity causing abnormal movements, which may lead to the ability of the DBS system to stimulate the brain by sensing the abnormal neural activity that is causing abnormal movements.

The aim of this study is to determine whether adherence to oral maintenance medications differs for patients randomized to receive a RxTimerCap, a Take-N-Slide, a standard pillbox, or none of these devices, with the hypothesis that low-touch devices improve adherence over control and that the increase in adherence is agnostic across devices.