Active clinical trials for "Parkinson Disease"

Levodopa is a precursor of dopamine and is the treatment of choice to treat the motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease (PD); however, the effect of levodopa on cardiovascular autonomic function in PD is poorly understood. Orthostatic hypotension has been documented as a potential side effect of levodopa. As a result, clinicians may be reluctant to prescribe levodopa in patients with PD with neurogenic orthostatic hypotension (PD+OH), which leads to suboptimal management of motor symptoms. On the other hand, other studies failed to show any clear relationship between levodopa and orthostatic hypotension in patients with PD. Important limitations of prior studies include the lack of detailed investigation of baroreflex cardiovagal and sympathetic noradrenergic functions and the fact that the same patients were not tested on and off levodopa. The investigators propose to investigate the effects of levodopa on cardiovascular autonomic function in patients with PD+OH and PD without neurogenic orthostatic hypotension (PD-OH) by performing standardized autonomic testing in the same patients on and off levodopa.

Parkinson's Disease (PD) patients suffer from gait impairments responsible for falls and bad quality of life: reduced speed and stride length, randomness in the temporal organization of stride duration variability (reduced Long-Range Autocorrelations (LRA)). For years, auditory cueing has been used to modulate PD gait and its effect on LRA is known. Less is known regarding the effects of haptic cueing on PD gait and especially on LRA. This pilot study will compare the spatio-temporal gait parameters and LRA of PD patients tested under three conditions: walking without cueing, walking with auditory cueing and walking with haptic cueing by means of rhythmic vibrations on the patients' wrists.

This study has three objectives about persons with Parkinson's Disease during bicycling: Determine the effect of visual feedback and competition during virtual bicycling on neuromuscular and cardiovascular intensity Determine the effect of visual-feedback and competition during virtual bicycling on the user experience of motivation, enjoyment & perception of exercise intensity Determine if attention differs during visual feedback compared to competition virtual bicycling

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 study's purpose is to assess the effect of yoga on measures of oxidative stress (i.e. reduction-oxidation [redox] status); motor function; and psychosocial well-being, and the feasibility and acceptability of implementing a Hatha yoga program in PD subjects.

A Single Period Investigation to Assess the Tolerability of Healthy Subjects to Oral Sinemet® (Levodopa/Carbidopa) Doses Administered Using a Divided Dose Approach

Primary objective: Determine if NR has an impact on the neurometabolic profile of patients with PD as measured by [18F]Fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG)-positron emission tomography (FDG-PET). Secondary objective: Determine whether high dose oral NR improves motor symptoms associated with PD. Tertiary objectives: determine whether high dose oral NR rectifies NAD metabolism and increases NAD levels in body fluids and muscle tissue.

The purpose of this study is to investigate brain signals related to freezing of gait (FoG), a symptom of Parkinson's Disease, that can lead to dangerous falls. The investigators hypothesize that uncovering these signals can lead to better deep brain stimulation interventions.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder of unknown cause that affects more than a million Americans. It's most prominent pathology is the degeneration of dopaminergic neurons in the brain. It is believed that oxidative stress and inflammation play an important role in the pathophysiology of Parkinson's disease as well. The object of this study is to evaluate whether nutritional supplementation with compounds that have been shown to have either anti- inflammatory, or antioxidant effects, might support brain function in patients with Parkinson's disease, particularly in regards to the dopamine system. Enrolled patients will be randomly assigned to receive oral and intravenous n-acetyl cysteine (NAC), or standard PD care. This study will utilize Ioflupane (DaTscan) single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) to measure dopamine function, magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) to measure inflammatory and oxidative stress markers, and neurological measures to assess clinical symptoms, in patients with PD. Subjects will receive a DaTSCAN and MRS initially and after completing the supplement or NAC regimen.

The effectiveness of Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) in certain movement disorders is widely demonstrated. The success of this procedure requires that the patient is awake and cooperative. The conditions of this intervention can be difficult to tolerate by the patient for several reasons: long procedure (from 3 to 8 hours), body immobilisation (particularly the head in the stereotactic frame), stress related to the localization of the DBS. It is therefore important to improve the comfort as well as the cooperation of the patient, during implantation of the DBS electrodes, in order to optimize the conditions of the intervention. In addition to analgesia, acupuncture should allow sedation without affecting alertness and should contribute to the regulation of any vegetative reactions during the procedure. Therefore, we hypothesize that acupuncture could improve the quality of care of the patient during a DBS procedure. In practice, this is electroacupuncture that will be used in this research to maintain the stimulation of acupuncture points to an optimal level during the time of the intervention.