Active clinical trials for "Parkinson Disease"

The purpose of this research study is to test cough function in individuals with Parkinson's disease and healthy older adults. Cough is a complex, defensive function which involves movement of the chest and lungs. The investigators want to compare the movement of the chest wall and the lungs during voluntary and reflex cough. The long-term goal of this research is to develop treatments for people with cough dysfunction. Cough dysfunction increases the risk for respiratory infections such as pneumonia. The results from this study will provide information to help researchers understand the difference between reflex and voluntary cough more fully.

The aim of the study is to investigate if an Internet-based psychological treatment based on principles from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can increase function and quality of life for patients with Parkinson disease.

To study the profile of Neupro patch administrated at 2 mg, 4 mg, 6 mg and 8 mg/day weekly in patients with early-stage Parkinson's disease

Movement slowness (bradykinesia) is one of the main motor symptoms in Parkinson Disease (PD). Several studies have shown that patients with PD exhibit slowness because they are unable to modulate, in an optimal way, the velocity of voluntary motor acts not induced by external stimulation. Indeed, these patients have difficulties to integrate multi-sensorial information, mainly proprioception. The investigators investigated changes in shoulder velocity during pointing movements by patients with PD after stimulation of soft tissues (aponeurosis) of upper limb muscles. The stimulation consisted of manipulating, with a hook (the diacutaneous fibrolysis method), the aponeurotic tissues enrobing the heads of the upper limb muscles. This technique has previously been shown to decrease passive tension and the tendon reflex response of the manipulated muscle group. The investigators hypothesis is that aponeurotic manipulation of shoulder muscles therefore creates a modification in the proprioceptive information, which in return temporarily decreases the bradykinesia of shoulder movements.

An open, observational health economic study to estimate marginal cost and health consequences of replacing conventional Parkinsons disease therapy with intraduodenal levodopa administered continuously

This study is a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled, parallel group study of a seven-week ascending dose period of SLV308 adjunctive to L-dopa treatment in patients with advanced stage Parkinson's disease (PD) and dose-dependent motor fluctuations. Patients (outpatients) will be randomized to one of three different treatment arms.

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate in patients with Parkinson's disease that, when compared to levodopa/carbidopa, Stalevo will delay the time from initiation of study drug to the time an increase in antiparkinsonian medication is required due to inadequately controlled parkinsonian symptoms.

Memory for action is especially important in everyday life although current literature is not very abundant. The enactment effect (i.e. better memory for performed actions than for verbally encoded sentences) is usually described as a robust effect in aging and can be found in many diseases. Although the enactment effect has been studied for three decades, there is still no consensus on how it enhances memory. Therefore, in order to gain additional insight into the representational basis of the enactment effect, in the present study, the investigators propose to test neurological patients. The investigators suggested that memory for action should be better than memory for verbally encoded information in Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. If patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Parkinson's disease (PD) have no cognitive assessment during the last 6 months, then they will realize different tests: MMSE (1), HAD (2), a cognitive assessment (3); (4); BREF (5); Assessment of apraxia, (6). Controls will perform the same tests to verify that they have no cognitive impairment. Then, two experimental conditions will be presented in all patients and controls: a first in which participants will have to name drawings (verbal learning) and a second in which they will have to reproduce an action associated with drawings (action learning). Immediately after this learning phase, a recognition task will be available and therefore participants will have to recognize drawings that had been presented previously. The main criteria used in the statistical analysis will be the correct recognition score.

Medical progress and modification of lifestyles have prolonged life expectancy, despite the development of chronic diseases. The support and care are often provided by a network of informal caregivers composed of family, friends, and neighbors. They became essential to help maintening the elderly persons to live at home. It has been demonstrated that the importance and the diversity of informal tasks may jeopardize their own physical, mental and social well-being. The aim of the Informal Carers of Elderly Cohort is to define, through a longitudinal study of their life course, the profiles of caregivers of patients with a diagnosis of one of the following diseases: cancer (breast, prostate, colon-rectum), neuro-degenerative diseases (Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's and similar diseases), neuro-vascular diseases (Cerebrovascular Accident (CVA)), Age-related Macular Degeneration(AMD) and heart disease (heart failure), aged ≥ 60 years old and living in Burgundy or Franche-Comte. By following the different phases of the caregiving relationship from the announcement of the diagnosis, it will be possible to assess the quality of life of caregivers and evaluate the implementation of a pragmatic social action to help informal caregivers through a randomized intervention trial nested in the cohort. Thanks to an analytical and longitudinal definition of the profiles of informal caregivers, this study could gather precise information on their life courses and their health trajectory by identifying the consequences associated with the concept of their role of aid in care. In addition, the randomized intervention trial will explore the efficacy, in terms of quality of life, and efficiency of a social action to support the caregivers. These data will allow to identify strategies that could be used to improve the existing sources of aid and to propose new approaches to help caregivers. This study will provide the opportunity to identify the most relevant means of support and to give an impulse for new healthcare policies.

The purpose of this study is to use local field potentials as control signals for adjusting DBS stimulation settings under varying patient states and to assess patient outcomes.