Active clinical trials for "Parkinson Disease"

Depression is one of the most important nonmotor features of idiopathic PD（Parkinson's disease ）which may not just interfere with the motor symptoms of PD but can also cause immense personal suffering as well as decreased quality of life with increased disability and caregiver burden. However,there is little hard evidence to guide clinical treatment. Although some newer dopamine agonists also have antidepressive effect, the use of tricyclic or nontricyclic antidepressants is frequently required.However, the side-effects of these agents may also worsen some preexisting nonmotor problems in PD. Wuling powder is a Chinese medicine which is made by cultivating Xylariasp mycelium using submerged fermentation technology. Xylariasp is the fungus sclerotia which grow in termite nests. Wuling powder is mainly used to soothe nerves and anti-insomnia in clinical. The antidepressant effect of Wuling powder has been confirmed in clinical, but not in the patients of Parkinson's disease. Therefore, the investigators design a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study to evaluate the antidepressant effect of Wuling powder in PD patients and its underlying mechanism.

Investigation of possible benefits of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) as a treatment of depression in patients with Parkinson's Disease, through a randomized placebo-controlled clinical trial.

This Pilot study will evaluate the safety and Efficacy of an investigational cell transplantation therapy, h-NSC, in patients with Parkinson's disease, through nasal drug delivery, a new delivery way. All patients will receive the therapy, which consists of human neural stem cells,

Idiopathic Parkinson's syndrome (IPS) is one of the most common neurodegenerative diseases. The prevalence and significance of this disease is continuously increasing in the course of demographic change. For many decades, the focus of diagnostics and therapy was on the motor symptoms of IPS. Only in recent years, it has been recognized that Parkinson's patients also suffer from a variety of non-motor symptoms. These have a decisive influence on the patient's quality of life. As one of the most common non-motor symptoms, 55 to 80% of IPS patients suffer from urinary dysfunction. This is associated with a very high impairment of quality of life due to a high degree of stigmatization and impairment of social participation. In clinical everyday life, Parkinson's patients regularly report the occurrence of a strong imperative urge to urinate, which occurs suddenly and is usually triggered by a certain external stimuli. Specific cognitive processing and reflection of these external stimuli seems to help overcome the imperative urge to urinate. From this clinical observation, it can be assumed that the imperative urge to urinate is subject to a certain cognitive control in the sense of targeted inhibition. The pharmacological therapy of urinary dysfunction in IPS patients is severely restricted and characterized by insufficient proof of efficacy as well as a high potential for side effects. In clinical practice, alpha-blockers and anticholinergics are frequently used, but the evidence base for IPS is inadequate. In addition, there is a highly relevant risk for Parkinson's patients of specific side effects such as orthostatic dysregulation or deterioration of cognition up to psychoses and hallucinations. This greatly limits their use especially in older IPS patients. While the use of dopaminergic medication is essential for the treatment of motor symptoms in Parkinson's patients, a large number of studies have not confirmed sufficient evidence for the efficacy of dopaminergic medication in urinary dysfunction. In addition, non-pharmacological therapy options, in particular pelvic floor training, are used to treat bladder dysfunction. Due to the lack of risk of side effects, pelvic floor training is currently recommended as a first-line therapy option for IPS patients. Initial studies have shown positive effects, but due to the lack of randomized controlled trials, a sufficient evidence base for this has not yet been established. The aim of the study is to examine whether a purely cognitive therapy approach is suitable to improve subjective and objective symptoms of urinary dysfunction in IPS patients. This therapeutic approach will be compared with the gold standard of pelvic floor training in terms of efficacy.

Progressive gait dysfunction is one of the main motor symptoms in people with Parkinson's disease (PD). It is generally expressed as reduced step length and gait speed, and as increased variability in step time and length. People with PD also exhibit stooped posture, which besides apparent disfigurement, also disrupts gait. The gait and posture impairments are usually resistant to the pharmacological treatment, worsen as the disease progresses, increase the likelihood of falls, and result in higher rates of hospitalization and mortality. These impairments may be caused by perceptual (spatial awareness) difficulties due to deficiency in processing information related to movement initiation and execution, which can result in misperceptions of the actual effort required to perform a desired movement and posture. Due to this, people with PD often depend on external cues during motor tasks. Although numerous studies have shown that cues can improve gait in PD, they did not provide feedback of the performance in real-time which is crucial to perceive, modulate, and achieve the desired movements. There are a few studies that provided real-time feedback using treadmill-based systems and observed improvements in gait in PD, however, they are not suitable for practicing target movements conveniently during free-living conditions, which can strongly reinforce movement patterns and improve clinical outcomes. There has been very little investigations of wearable real-time feedback (WRTF) systems to improve gait and posture in PD. The investigators are aware of only one study that tried to improve gait using a wearable system with real-time feedback capabilities, but the study did not provide any feedback on posture. Also, some of the parameters used for feedback were not easy to perceive and modulate in real-time. Based on the investigators' recent success with a treadmill-based real-time feedback system which improved gait and posture in people with PD, the proposed study will develop a WRTF system, validate its performance with gold standard measures from a motion capture system, and test its feasibility in a group of people with mild to moderate PD. The most novel aspects of the proposed system are that it will provide feedback on parameters such as step length, arm swing, step time, and upright posture which have been greatly affected in PD and shown to increase the risk factors for balance disorders and falls. In addition, the system will consists of two types of feedback: a Continuous Feedback (CF) mode and an On-Demand Feedback (ODF) mode. The CF mode will help users learn and practice desired gait and posture movements and the ODF mode will help to maintain them during activities of daily living. The gait and posture performances during feedback and non-feedback conditions will be compared and, if the expected benefits are observed, a follow-up randomized clinical trial will be performed to test the effectiveness of this novel technology during daily activities.

Depression is common in Parkinson's disease (PD), but the effective treatment is not established yet. tDCS is a non-invasive brain stimulation to modulate brain function. The tDCS on the depression in general population were already conducted, but not in PD. This study is to know whether transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is effective for the treatment of depression in PD. Participant will be asked to visit three consecutive days for the non-invasive stimulation.

INTRODUCTION: Mental practice (MP) and action observation (AO) are characterized as cognitive strategies that contribute to motor planning and learning in diverse populations. Individuals with Parkinson's Disease (PD) are recent targets, since, with disease progression, they need external strategies to aid in motor organization. However, there is still no evidence of the efficacy of MP and AO in the gait of PD. OBJECTIVES: To compare the effects of physical practice preceded by MP and AO on gait performance in individuals with Idiopathic PD (IPD). METHODS: A controlled, randomized, single-blind clinical trial with 66 individuals with IPD, aged between 50 and 75 years, without cognitive deficit and in the moderate phase of the disease will be performed. For the inclusion and characterization of the sample, the following instruments / equipment will be used: (1) Identification form (sociodemographic, clinical and anthropometric aspects); (2) Mini Mental State Examination and Montreal Cognitive Assessment (cognitive level); (3) Hoehn and Yahr Scale (level of physical disability); (4) Revised Movement Imagery Questionnaire (sharpness of the mental image); (5) Qualisys Motion Capture Systems® (gait kinematics); (6) Emotiv Epoc + (electroencephalographic activity); (7) Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale - UPDRS (motor function and activities of daily living); (8) Timed Up and Go Test - TUG Test (mobility); and (9) Parkinson's Disease Questionnaire - PDQ-39 (quality of life).Participants included will be randomly assigned to two groups: experimental (n = 33), who will participate in MP + AO and physical gait practice; and control group (n = 33), who will participate only in the physical practice of gait. Both groups will be submitted to 12 training sessions (3x / week, for 4 weeks) and will be reevaluated 10 minutes, 7 days and 30 days after the last training session with respect to items (4), (5), (6) and (8) of the evaluation. Primary outcomes will be velocity, stride length and range of motion of the hip and the secondary ones will be sharpness of the mental image, electroencephalographic activity and performance in the TUG Test. The normality in the data distribution will be verified through the Shapiro-Wilk test. The "t" test and the Mann-Whitney test will be used to verify the homogeneity of the groups in the baseline. A repeated measures ANOVA will verify the interaction between the groups at the moments observed.

The main objective of this project is to evaluate the effectiveness of Observation of Action (Action Observation, AO) both in increasing the speed of movement of the upper limbs, agility and locomotion, and in improving the activities and quality of life in people with Parkinson's disease (PD) during a 4-6 month follow-up. The second objective is to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of a tele-rehabilitation protocol using home-based AO therapy. The telecommunication technology will provide a complete training through a low-cost software run on a touch-screen device, which will show the actions to be imitated several times by people with PD. This project will be the first attempt to implement AO-based treatment at home and, if successful, will be highly translational to clinical practice thanks to the advanced development and broad accessibility of information technology and telecommunications in our country. Furthermore, continuous exercise will reduce the risks of complications and the frequency of hospital admissions, thus reducing costs for the National Health System.

Pain is the most prevalent non-motor symptom in Parkinson disease, and the motor improvement not always is related to the pain improvement with the medication treatment. By this, we are testing a non-invasive method called transcranial magnetic stimulation as an alternative to treat pain related to Parkinson disease. This technique can lead to either inhibitory or excitatory effects in brain circuits depending on stimulation parameters, and is known to provide analgesic effects.

On May 30,2018 ,Investigators intend to conduct a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of idebenone in the treatment of early-stage Parkinson's disease with motor and non-motor symptoms which is to observe the therapeutic effect of idebenone on motor symptoms and non-motor symptoms in patients with early Parkinson's disease。