Active clinical trials for "Lung Diseases, Obstructive"

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is a progressive disease that is characterized by loss of lung function, leading to breathlessness, poor quality of life, loss in productivity, and increased mortality. The World Health Organization estimates that COPD will be the third leading cause of death worldwide by 2020, accounting for more than 7 million deaths annually. COPD patients frequently experience 'lung attacks', during which breathlessness, coughing, and sputum production dramatically increase, leading to urgent office visits, emergency admissions and hospitalizations. Lung attacks reduce patient quality of life and cost the Canadian health care system nearly $4 billion dollars each year in direct and indirect costs. Lung attacks can be effectively managed if they are identified and treated early, but symptoms of a lung attack often overlap with those of other common conditions such as heart failure, pneumonia and even influenza. Because there are no tests that can separate lung attacks from these conditions, doctors struggle to accurately diagnose lung attacks at an early stage when drugs are most effective. This can lead to a delayed or even incorrect diagnosis and inappropriate treatment. This research will address this critical need. Our goal is to improve COPD patient care by developing new blood tests that will help identify patients who are in the early stages of a lung attack. Doctors will be able to use these tests to treat lung attacks at earlier stages than is currently possible. These blood tests will enable doctors to personalize management of COPD to meet the needs of the individual patient. Hypothesis: New biomarker blood tests can be used to better identify and manage patients with COPD.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease has become a serious global health care and public health problems due to its high prevalence, high morbidity and heavy economic burden. Acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is one of the most important causes of death in patients with COPD. Systemic corticosteroids therapy is recommended in COPD exacerbations. In clinical practice for the treatment of acute exacerbation of COPD， antibiotic application is still controversial. Evidence from current guideline is based on strict criteria from randomized controlled trials, thus the given condition is simplified. Patients meet the criteria account for the minority in the real world. Therefore, it is still not clear whether most patients benefit from the recommended treatment. In our design, hospitalized patients with acute exacerbation of COPD will be enrolled, with their treatment, arterial hypoxemia, recovery time and length of hospitalization being observed. The main purpose is to evaluate the benefit effect of current recommended treatment of acute exacerbation of COPD in the real world.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a major health problem whose prevalence is increasing rapidly. The gradual decrease in exercise tolerance is one of the usual consequences of COPD that affects the functional independence and quality of life of patients. In COPD patients, breathlessness and muscle fatigue are the main symptoms limiting exercise. Recent studies have shown that most of the physiological mechanisms of psychological factors such as emotions, motivation, memory, personality, expectations, or prior experience can greatly influence and modulate the perception of breathlessness. It has been proposed that the attentional distraction (visual or auditory) during exercise may be associated with a decrease in anxiety and shortness of breath and could improve exercise tolerance in COPD. We therefore propose to study the impact of attentional strategies of distraction on the perception of dyspnea and walking tolerance in patients with COPD. The research hypotheses are: i) Compared with exposure to a strategy of negative attentional distraction during exercise, exposure to a strategy of positive attentional distraction will improve walking exercise tolerance in patients with COPD; ii) For a given level of effort, sensory perception and emotional perception will be enhanced by exposure to a strategy of positive attentional distraction. Ten subjects with moderate to severe COPD will be recruited at the Research Center of the Institut Universitaire de cardiologie et de pneumologie de Québec (CRIUCPQ). During an assessment visit, we will measure complete pulmonary function, body composition and maximal functional capacity during a maximal incremental test work performed on a treadmill. During two subsequent experimental visits, and after spirometry control, participants will perform a walking test performed on a treadmill at an intensity corresponding to 75% of maximum effort during maximal incremental test. The test will be carried out in combination with a strategy of either positive attentional distraction, neutral attentional distraction or negative attentional distraction . The order of the condition will be randomized.

COPD patients will be recruited and assigned into one of each group: 1) Control group or 2) Yoga group. In Yoga groups, subjected will be asked to participate in Modified Dantien Yoga training for 12 weeks (3 times/week, 60 min/time). The subjects will be evaluated their pulmonary function, functional fitness performance, dyspnea score, and quality of life at baseline and after 12 wk training.

The evidence for poor inhaler technique is both well established and observed worldwide. What is unclear from the evidence is why individuals demonstrate poor technique, despite the majority admitting to having previously had instruction on inhaler technique. The primary research question is 'Will there be a difference between post education inhaler technique scores when comparing structured education against informal education?' To try and establish why individuals use inhalers incorrectly a semi structured interview is proposed

COPD is ranked number 3 by the WHO list of important diseases worldwide and is the only disease with increasing mortality. The pathogenesis of cigarette smoke-induced COPD is obscure, therefore more insight is needed to design effective anti-inflammatory agents. Recently it has become clear that cigarette smoke-induced inflammation is not only present in the lungs but also in the blood, and that this systemic inflammation has important consequences for the clinical expression of COPD. The investigators hypothesize that healthy individuals who are susceptible to cigarette smoking demonstrate a higher and aberrant systemic inflammatory response to cigarette smoke. This susceptibility is caused by heterogeneous factors and is associated with various polymorphic genes that interact with each other and with the environment. Objective: To study systemic inflammation in individuals who are or are not susceptible to develop COPD. To characterize the switch to chronicity of the systemic inflmmatory response in COPD To determine whether the type and severity of the systemic inflammation contributes to the clinical outcome of COPD To compare between subjects who are or are not susceptible to develop COPD in peripheral blood, the corticosteroid responsiveness in vitro, and to unravel underlying mechanisms. To study the role of candidate genes that may play a role in the development of fixed airway obstruction, and to identify clues for patient's responsiveness to specific drugs To develop new biological and clinical markers for the early diagnosis and monitoring of COPD To define possible mediators involved in the early induction of COPD in susceptible smokers, and to define new drug targets

The aim of this study to evaluate clinical efficacy of tiotropium in patients with airflow obstruction due to Tuberculosis (TB) destroyed lung.

Listening to breath sounds with the stethoscope/auscultation is used by pulmonary physicians in conjunction with pulmonary function, signs and symptoms, oxygen saturation and diagnostic testing to admit, follow and discharge patients from hospital. Of these, only auscultation routinely ceases upon discharge from Hospital. Healthcare utilization statistics have shown that for more than a decade, readmission after discharge for an exacerbation of COPD or severe asthma (or chronic heart failure) remains a major problem. The Strados RESP Biosensor has been designed to extend the range of lung sound recording both geographically and temporally to improve the standard of care when access to continuous monitoring has been replaced by periodic or no monitoring. The primary purpose of this study is to assess the associations between RESP Biosensor-acquired lung findings and subjective measures of respiratory symptoms as measured by validated measurement tools, and objective measure of respiratory physiology as determined by home spirometry

Cigarette smoking causes an increase in inflammation in the lungs. In about 20% of smokers this inflammation leads to damage in lungs including making holes in the lung tissue. This damage can not be repaired and these people find it very difficult to breathe. One of the problems with this disease called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD for short, is that by the time patients visit their doctor with symptoms, the damage has already been done. At the moment, there is no way to predict which smokers will go on to develop COPD. The aim of this research is to look at smokers who breathe normally and use an imaging technique called a CT scan, to look at their lungs in more detail. Some of these people will have spots on their scan which may be caused by inflammation. We want to look at the cells at these spots to see if they make more proteins and enzymes that cause lung damage when compared to people that do not have these spots. We would then be able to predict which smokers are likely to develop COPD and treat them early before they have damaged their lungs.

The primary aim of this study is to exploit a difference between COPD patients, chronic smokers without COPD and healthy non-smoking subjects. This will help to assess the utility of inflammatory and oxidative markers in exhaled air and sputum and to compare them with the lung function, clinical parameters and computerised tomography (CT).