Active clinical trials for "Neurodevelopmental Disorders"

Diagnosis and characterization of neurodevelopmental disorders are considered challenging processes because of their complexity, multi-factoriality and heterogeneity. The present project will consider two of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders (i.e. autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and language disorders (LD)), with the aim to overcome these difficulties, by: a) deeply investigating their neuronal correlates; b) identifying multi-domain biomarkers (electrophysiological, genetic, environmental and clinical); c) developing a machine learning algorithm for early diagnosis. To achieve the above mentioned aims a multi-domain dataset will be used, comprising data collected from typically developing infants, infants at high risk for ASD and infants at high risk for LD. The data that will be used have been already collected within other trials performed at the Scientific Institute E. Medea.

Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) is a disorder of development of the neural retina and its vasculature that may impact vision in vulnerable preterm neonates for a lifetime. This study utilizes new technology to determine visual and neurological development of very preterm infants in the intensive care nursery, during a period of rapid growth of the retina, optic nerve and brain. The long-term goal of this study is to help improve preterm infant health care via objective bedside imaging and analysis that characterizes early critical indicators of poor vision, neurological development and ROP, which will rapidly translate to better early intervention and improved future vision care.

Children will receive comprehensive evaluations through the Children's Research Triangle (CRT) clinical program. The assessment for the child will be in accordance with the protocol developed by Astley and Clarren as performed by one of the clinic pediatricians and final diagnosis will be according to Institute of Medicine (IOM) criteria. Children will be randomized into either a Treatment or Control group. The Treatment group will receive (in addition to standard referrals) neurocognitive habilitation and psychotherapy services as well as parent psychoeducation. The Control group will be referred for intervention through existing community and school-based agencies.

Approximately 2% of neonates in the US are born very preterm. Preterm births are associated with impaired cognitive, language and motor function, and increased risk for autism spectrum disorders. Epidemiological studies indicate a dose-response relationship between gestational age at delivery and cognitive impairments, with the most immature of newborns being the most susceptible to developmental delays. Sensitive and reproducible biomarkers of long-term neurocognitive impairments are currently lacking. The investigators seek to identify epigenetic markers that mediate the relationship between adverse prematurity-related exposures and neurocognitive impairments. The overarching hypothesis of this proposal is that DNA methylation profiles of CD34+ hematopoetic progenitor and stem cells from very preterm infants can be used as a risk-stratifying biomarker for predicting neurocognitive impairment in childhood.

The aim of this project is to determine the epidemiology of congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection and incidence of subsequent permanent neurological sequelae in a high HIV prevalent setting in Soweto, Johannesburg. A cross-sectional study will be conducted on mother-infant pairs, screening mothers for CMV infection and newborns for congenital CMV infection. Maternal CMV prevalence will be determined by testing for CMV specific antibodies in blood. Newborn congenital infection will be determined by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests on newborn saliva and urine within 3 weeks of birth. Various risk factors associated with congenital CMV such as HIV exposure, and gestational age will be assessed. The association between maternal vaginal CMV shedding postnatally with congenital CMV infection will be explored by swabbing maternal vaginal fluid and conducting quantitative CMV PCR analysis. Newborns confirmed with congenital CMV and a control group of uninfected newborns will form a cohort to be followed up until 12 months of age monitoring for various neurological sequelae such as hearing loss, neurodevelopmental impairment, ocular damage, cerebral damage and seizures. A comparison of vaccine immune responses between cases of congenital CMV and the CMV uninfected infants to the primary series of vaccines in the National Expanded Programme on Immunisation will be compared. The contribution of CMV infection to neonatal death and stillbirths will be described by minimally invasive tissue sampling (MITS) for CMV on babies that die during the neonatal period and stillbirths.

Infants included in the study will be divided into two groups as healthy infants and cystic fibrosis infants . Demographic, natal and postnatal information of the infants will be available from patient files. 12 months infants with cystic fibrosis and healthy infants will be assessed by the Bayley-III Baby and Child Development Assessment Scale (Bayley III) and the Gross Motor Function Measure. The assessment outcomes of healthy and cystic fibrosis infants will be compared.

The primary aim of this study is to compare the diagnostic accuracy of an iPad application (Play.Care assessment) with the current clinical "gold standard" diagnosis for diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in children. Recent evidence has suggested that movement abnormalities are one of the early markers of ASD. However, current clinical diagnostic assessments fail to take this into account. Further, the current "gold standard" clinical tests take a number of hours to administer, require extensive clinical training and are subject to a certain level of subjectivity. Alternatively, by assessing a child's interaction with an iPad screen as they play, an objective measurement of movement can be obtained, which can aid in the diagnostic process. This study aims to recruit a total of 760 children (Typically Developing (TD), Other Neurodevelopmental Disorders (OND) and ASD groups) to assess the diagnostic accuracy of tablet game play in ASD. Children who have been diagnosed with ASD will perform the Play.Care assessment to assess if the tablet result matches their clinical diagnosis. Results from the clinical assessment and Play.Care assessment will then be compared to assess the sensitivity (the proportion of participants with ASD who test positive for ASD as a result of the Play.Care assessment) and specificity (the proportion of participants without ASD who test negatively for ASD as a result of the Play.Care assessment assessment) of the Play.Care assessment.

The aim of the study is to examine the prospective validity of neurocognitive functions and emotional factors in schoolchildren with ADHD and a control group of typically developing schoolchildren at baseline and after three years.

Purpose: This study will examine brain activity in children age 10-18 with disruptive behavior problems, including conduct disorder (CD), oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), compared with children without behavioral problems. Our goal is to examine differences in how emotions, social situations, and problem-solving situations are processed in the brain across these groups of children.

The purpose of the proposed research is to study the potential changes in biomarkers of patients with neurodevelopmental disorders in response to treatment in clinical trials or in private psychiatry practice utilizing non-invasive psychophysiological measurements. The investigators plan to obtain psychophysical measurements throughout several periods of treatment.