Active clinical trials for "Parkinson Disease"

Parkinson's disease is a common neurodegenerative disorder in which patients experience progressive motor disability and many disabling non-motor symptoms. Recent studies have consistently found that people who do not use caffeine are at higher risk of developing Parkinson's disease. This suggests that caffeine may have potential as a treatment for PD. In a pilot study of caffeine for daytime sleepiness in PD, there was evident benefit on the motor manifestations of disease. There have been other lines of evidence that have suggested caffeine could be useful in PD. This study is to evaluate the efficacy of caffeine 200 mg BID vs matching placebo for motor and non-motor aspects of disease. This will be in three stages. In the first six-month stage, medications will be held constant, to see whether caffeine does have motor benefits. Then we will perform a four-year extension stage to define if the effects of caffeine persist (or even magnify), and to see if caffeine helps reduce dose of other PD meds and/or prevents their side effects. Finally, we will finish with a six-month stage in which we will place all patients on caffeine - this will allow us to assess caffeine's use in later disease, but more importantly, will assess whether early use of caffeine produces long term changes beyond its immediate effects.

The purpose of this study is to determine the safety and effectiveness of a drug called atomoxetine for the treatment of cognitive impairment for Parkinson 's disease. Atomoxetine (ATM) is an approved drug currently on the market for the treatment of attention deficit. It works to increase the amount of norepinephrine (a chemical in the brain that helps keep us awake and alert) in our brain. ATM has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to be used in the treatment of PD.

The effectiveness of non-pharmacological treatment on gait impairment on Parkinson Disease (PD) such as exercises has been demonstrated; in particular an example for patient tailored exercises is physiotherapy. The goal of physiotherapy treatment is to enable PD patients to maintain their maximum level of mobility, activity, and independence. Several systematic reviews and clinical studies have shown that physical therapy can contribute to minimize the disabling effects of motor and sensory impairments in order to enhance participation in societal roles and quality of life. The use of electromechanical devices such as treadmill training (a supplement to conventional therapies) in the last years has also been used with PD patients and a systematic Cochrane has been conducted by Mehrholz in 2010 to assess the effectiveness and acceptability of treadmill training in the treatment of gait disorders for patients with PD. In the last years new robotic assisted device can be used in gait training in neurological disorder. Till now only few studies, have focused on the effects of exoskeleton or end effector robot-assisted training in PD patients, with a interesting preliminary results.

The purpose of this study is to determine if Oxaloacetate (OAA) is a safe and effective treatment for Parkinson's disease. Each subject will be asked to make 3 study visits and complete two safety follow-up phone calls over a 4 month period.

Levodopa and non-ergot dopaminergic agonists such as pramipexole are both recommended as the first-line symptomatic treatment for early untreated Parkinson's disease (PD), previous clinical trial indicated that initial pramipexole owns advantage over levodopa regarding motor complications, on the contrary, less adverse effect like freezing and severe somnolence favors initial treatment of levodopa. Thus, it remains controversial that initiation of which medication will be better for those patients with early PD. Parkinson's disease-related spatial covariance patter (PDRP) is a new biomarker which can represent the network activity of brain and severity of PD. Based on the literatures and our previous data, the investigators hypothesize that PDRP will be served as a biomarker to help us evaluate and compare the effect of levodopa or pramipexole on the progression of PD, which might be able to provide further evidence for clinicians to address the above critical issue.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a chronic, degenerative disease described by motors and non-motors symptoms. Changes in swallowing and respiratory dynamics increase risk of tracheal aspiration largely responsible for increased morbidity and mortality in this population. Thus, interdisciplinary rehabilitation strategies can reduce the complications of dysphagia, with consequent improvement of the prognosis of individuals with PD. Objective: To determine the impact of combined oral motor exercises and breathing exercises on swallowing disorders in individuals with PD. Method: Clinical trial, randomized and blinded for the examinator. For all subjects will be given the stage of PD and applied quality of life questionnaire. The swallowing complaints will be investigated through structured questionnaire and functional aspects of swallowing with videofluoroscopy. The Manovacuometry Spirometry will determine measures of respiratory function. The assessment of vocal and speech disorders will be done with perceptive, acoustic, aerodynamic and electroglottographic measures as well as analysis of intelligibility. Three groups of intervention will be defined: one of them doing oral motor exercises for swallowing, one doing breathing exercises and another must do this two interventions combined. Effect of intervention will be assessed through measures of swallowing, breathing, voice and speech. The groups will be compared, according to the principle of "intention to treat" by appropriate statistical tests, according to the distribution of the dependent variables.

As the MAO-B inhibitor rasagiline is able to improve motor skills it might have positive effects on sleep disruption by reducing nocturnal akinesia. As it was reported to cause only minor sleep disruption in PD Patients, it might be able to improve sleep architecture. The investigators thus study the effects of Rasagiline on sleep disturbances measured by polysomnographic (PSG) evaluation of sleep efficacy and PDSS-2. Secondary measures are other sleep variables measured by PSG, sleep quality and daytime sleepiness assessed by standardized scales as well as cognitive function, depression and QoL index.

The rationale for conducting this study is to evaluate the efficacy, tolerability, and safety of rasagiline compared to placebo in levodopa-treated Parkinson's Disease (PD) Chinese patients with motor fluctuations. Azilect® (Rasagiline) is indicated for the treatment of idiopathic PD as monotherapy (without levodopa) or as adjunct therapy (with levodopa) in patients with end of dose fluctuations.

This study is to evaluate long-term safety, tolerability and efficacy for AFQ056 in patients who have completed an AFQ056A study in Parkinson's disease L-dopa induced dyskinesias (PD-LID).

Safety of SPM 962 in a once-daily repeated long-term treatment in Parkinson's disease patients who are not concomitantly treated with L-dopa will be investigated with a doses.