Active clinical trials for "Metabolic Diseases"

It is also noteworthy that the imbalance between the production, supply and elimination of especially α-amino acids may contribute to the intensification of the inflammatory response and the subsequent burden of the renal tubules, which may result in damage and developing chronic renal failure. Among the many amino acids used in sports, arginine and its metabolites deserve special attention. The role of arginine appears to increase in specific physiological states associated with disease, injury or significant strain on the body, leading to an increase in the rate of catabolic transformation. Arginine plays a significant role in protein biosynthesis and detoxification processes related to ammonia removal and urea formation .

The brain is constantly active and energetically expensive, making up a quarter of the body's energy budget despite occupying only 2% of its mass. To fuel this incessant activity, the brain relies on glucose, which accommodates 99% of its metabolic needs. In most cases, glucose is the ideal fuel since it is in constant surplus owing to 24-hr access to sugar-rich food. However, the brain is metabolically flexible and capable of metabolizing alternative fuels when glucose is scarce, or, decreasing rapidly. For example, during fasting when glucose stores are dwindling, ketone bodies can supplement the brain's metabolic needs. During intense exercise, when glucose stores are being rapidly depleted, lactate - a byproduct of this glucose turnover - similarly acts as an alternative fuel for the brain. In healthy individuals, exploiting this 'brain metabolic flexibility' may be beneficial in protecting the brain from aging. The main question is: Does the brain substrate switch that occurs during fasting and high-intensity exercise underlie the beneficial effects on the brain? Young, healthy participants will fast for 3 days and complete high-intensity cycling exercise, each of which will induce a brain substrate switch. Participants will also be passively infused with ketones (to simulate fasting) and lactate (to simulate high-intensity exercise) in the fed and rested state. In doing so, the investigators will isolate the brain substrate switch from the broader, pluripotent stressors that encompass fasting and exercise. The main outcome variables are the brain biomarkers: brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and secreted amyloid beta precursor protein (sAPPA).

When all the food we eat is digested, it will increase blood glucose. Two people can have different glucose blood levels to the same food and one reason can be bacteria live in our gut. There are more than a thousand bacteria species in our gastrointestinal tract that have an important role in the proper functioning of our body, so our gut microbiome is a key piece for our nutrition and blood glucose control. Nowadays, one of the major public health concerns is the rise of people with diabetes (a disease characterized by an increase in blood glucose) and the increase in obesity, in which one of several risks is diabetes. There are multiple reasons for people develop those diseases, however, some care on diet management can prevent, delay, or improve the effects of these illnesses. Therefore, this study proposes studying the blood glucose variation between healthy volunteers and if there is a relationship between that variation and the intestinal bacteria present. These results can help doctors and nutritionists elaborate a personalized diet for people who need blood glucose level control. The investigators are recruiting volunteers aged 18 to 60, healthy, living at Florianópolis and the surroundings to participate in this crossover randomized N-of-1 study. The participants must collect fecal samples. After collection, the participants will meet the investigators and receive a kit containing ten standardized breakfasts, with two kinds of muffins, and a kit containing a glucose monitor (Abbott Freestyle Libre-CE marked) to monitor their blood sugar levels. The volunteers must have breakfast with the standardized meals and monitor the fasting glucose blood and postprandial glucose blood levels (two hours after the breakfast ingestion) for ten consecutive days. Besides, they must take notes (like a diet diary) about all the food they ingest during the day in ten days of the study.

Dietary interventions have been consistently proposed as a part of a comprehensive strategy to lower the incidence and severity of atherosclerosis and coronary vascular disease. Excessive comsumption of fats enriched in saturated fatty acids (SFAs) is associated with an increased risk of atherosclerosis and other cardiovascular diseases (CVD). In contrasts, replacement of SFAs with monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs) and omega-3 long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (ω3-LCPUFAs) has been reported to be inversely associated with risk of atherosclerosis. This is partly due to the ability of MUFAs (and ω3-LCPUFAs) to modulate lipoprotein composition, oxidation state, and consequently their functionality, among others. While most of the nutritional studies have focused on elucidating the mechanisms by which dietary fats affect lipoprotein particles, little or nothing is known about the regulatory effect of dietary fatty acids on extracellular vesicles (EVs). EVs are small phospholipid particles that convey molecular bioactive cargoes and play essential roles in intercellular communication and, hence, a multifaceted role in health and disease. For the first time, the purpose of this project is to establish whether the type of major fatty acids present on a diet (SFAs, MUFAs, or ω3-LCPUFAs) may alter the structure, cargo, and functionality of postprandial- and long-term-EVs. In the precision nutrition era, the investigators expect to offer a new insight on EVs and their relationship with dietary fatty acids through the following objectives: 1) To map changes in the lipidome, proteome, microtranscriptome, and functional properties of circulating EVs in healthy subjects and patients with metabolic syndrome (MetS) both at fasting and at postprandial state upon a challenge of a meal rich in SFAs, MUFAs, and ω3-LCPUFAs; 2) To analyse the contribution of postprandial triacylglyceride-rich lipoproteins (TRL) on EVs-mediated intercellular communication in a fatty acid-dependent manner; and 3) To determine the influence of diets rich in SFAs, MUFAs, and ω3-LCPUFAs on EVs in an animal model of atherosclerosis in the setting of MetS. Collectively, this project will provide fundamental insight into EV biology, and remarks the clinical and functional relevance and divergent consequences of dietary fatty acids in health and disease.

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) affects 10% of all women, and it usually co-exists with high levels of sex hormones called androgens, such as testosterone. Women with PCOS are at increased risk of metabolic complications such as diabetes, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, high blood pressure and heart disease. However, very little is understood about how androgen excess may drive the metabolic complications observed in women with PCOS. Skeletal muscle is an important site of energy metabolism; increasingly, it is suspected that skeletal muscle energy balance is adversely impacted by androgens, thereby driving metabolic complications. To take this theory forward, we want to investigate the effects of androgens on muscle energy metabolism. We will perform detailed metabolic testing (including blood tests and muscle biopsies) in women with PCOS before and after taking tablets that block the action of testosterone for 28 days. In addition, we will be using a gold standard technique to see how women with PCOS metabolise fat and other nutrients by measuring markers in blood and breath samples after a breakfast test meal. This clinical research will increase our understanding of the complex relationships between hormonal abnormalities and metabolic disease in women with PCOS.

The Continence, Sexual and Metabolic Health (CONTROL 4 LIFE) study will evaluate the recovery of continence, sexual function, and health outcomes in individuals who have undergone surgery for prostate cancer. The purpose of this study is to better understand the timelines of recovery for these outcomes after surgery for prostate cancer. As part of this study, all participants will receive resources offered by Alberta Health Services regarding pre- and post-prostatectomy care, including information on pelvic floor exercises. Through the CONTROL 4 LIFE study, the investigators will also be evaluating outcomes related to physical activity, fitness and quality of life. These assessments will enable the investigators to better understand how well and how long it takes for individuals to recover after surgery for prostate cancer.

Cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF), also known as "exercise capacity", is the capacity of respiratory and circulatory systems to supply oxygen to skeletal muscle during exercise for the generation of energy. Determinants of CRF include lung capacity, capillary density, cardiac output, hemoglobin concentration, and mitochondrial function. The research group studies how CRF is related to fuel utilization, yielding a mechanistic understanding of the association between lower CRF and worsening metabolic health via mitochondrial function. The objective of this study is to measure fuel utilization in response to habitual diet for one week in adolescents and young adults, ages 14-22 years (n=30). Fuel utilization will be estimated by glucose measures using a continuous glucose monitor (CGM). Habitual dietary intake will be collected via a mobile phone application (BiteAI, Inc) that uses artificial intelligence to extract nutrient information from food photographs. Participants will undergo two standard of care (SOC) meal tolerance tests at home - a glucose tolerance test and a Ensure® mixed meal tolerance test. CRF will be estimated by measuring maximum oxygen consumption (VO2 max) during a graded treadmill test. The hypothesis is that a higher VO2 max will be associated with increased fuel utilization, measured by lower glucose response to the SOC meal tolerance tests. The proposed study is described in the following aims: SPECIFIC AIM 1. Test for feasibility of completion of self-report dietary food records, completion of two at home meal tolerance tests that are standard of care for metabolic health screening, and completion of a seven-day continuous glucose monitor. SPECIFIC AIM 2. Identify nutrients and foods that are associated with an elevated glucose response. SPECIFIC AIM 3. Assess the influence of VO2 max on the glucose response to the SOC glucose tolerance test and Ensure® mixed meal tolerance test.

Many genetic diseases of lymphohematopoietic cells (such as sickle cell anemia, thalassemia, Diamond-Blackfan anemia, Combined Immune Deficiency (CID), Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome, chronic granulomatous disease, X-linked lymphoproliferative disease, and metabolic diseases affecting hematopoiesis) are sublethal diseases caused by mutations that adversely affect the development or function of different types of blood cells. Although pathophysiologically diverse, these genetic diseases share a similar clinical course of significant progressive morbidity, overall poor quality of life, and ultimate death from complications of the disease or its palliative treatment. Supportive care for these diseases includes chronic transfusion, iron chelation, and surgery (splenectomy or cholecystectomy) for the hemoglobinopathies; prophylactic antibiotics, intravenous immunoglobulin, and immunomodulator therapies for the immune deficiencies; and enzyme replacement injections and dietary restriction for some of the metabolic diseases. The suboptimal results of such supportive care measures have led to efforts to implement more aggressive therapeutic interventions to cure these lymphohematopoietic diseases. The most logical strategies for cure of these diseases have been either replacement of the patient's own hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) with those derived from a normal donor allogeneic bone marrow transplant (BMT) or hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT), or to genetically modify the patient's own stem cells to replace the defective gene (gene therapy).

The rationale of this research is that deep phenotyping of individuals at the extremes of cholesterol efflux will identify key determinants of efflux that are potential novel therapeutic targets to prevent or reverse Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease (ASCVD). The investigators propose to carry out the objective by studying participants at extreme low and high cholesterol efflux identified from the investigator's study in the population-based Dallas Heart Study by accomplishing the following aims: 1) determine the heritability of and genomic factors associated with cholesterol efflux by establishing a family pedigree of extreme low and high efflux and sequencing candidate genes involved in HDL metabolism; and 2) identify the protein and lipid signature of extreme low and high cholesterol efflux in a sex- and ethnicity-specific manner using mass spectroscopy and ELISA in FPLC-derived fractions. The investigators expect to identify genetic variants and sex- and ethnicity-specific combinations of proteins and lipids in participants with extreme low and high efflux that may lead to novel ways to modulate efflux. This proposal leverages a well-phenotyped population-based study to characterize the gene-protein-lipid signature of 1) extremes of cholesterol efflux in a sex- and ethnicity-specific manner. Successful completion of these aims will have immediate and direct impact on the use of cholesterol efflux as a clinically relevant biomarker of therapeutic benefit and are necessary for the clinical development of appropriate new targets for manipulation of the key atheroprotective function of cholesterol efflux to reduce ASCVD.

The Southampton Women's Survey was established to assess the influence of factors operating before conception and during pregnancy on the health and development of the offspring. 12,583 non-pregnant young women were recruited, and 3,158 were followed through pregnancy, with their offspring followed-up at 6 months and 1, 2, 3, 4, 6-7, 8-9 and 12-13 years. The 17-19 year follow-up has been piloted and is about to start.