Active clinical trials for "Neuromuscular Diseases"

Dysphagia and the intensive care unit-acquired weakness (ICU-AW) are common and outcome-relevant neuromuscular complications in critically ill patients, especially after prolonged mechanical ventilation, sepsis and multi-organ failure. However, the impact of these two complications on the clinical course of critically ill patients needs further investigation. Furthermore, the standard diagnostic procedure to detect and grade the acquired dysphagia using the fiberoptic endoscopic evaluation of swallowing (FEES) and the Medical Research Council sum score (MRC-ss) to detect ICU-AW are time-consuming and strongly dependent on patient compliance. An early and easy-to-use detection of these neuromuscular complications is currently difficult to be achieved in this patient population. Neuromuscular ultrasound (NMUS) and the measurement of neuromuscular damage blood biomarkers became increasingly interesting for clinical researchers in the recent years due to their broad availability and their simple and non-invasive application. However, the value of these new diagnostic tests to evaluate dysphagia and ICU-AW needs to be verified.

The goal of this study is to establish a genetic registry of patients with early-onset motor neuron and neuromuscular diseases. The investigators will collect samples from patients with a motor neuron or a neuromuscular disorder and their family members. The samples to be collected will be obtained using minimally invasive (whole blood) means. The research team will then extract high quality genomic DNA or RNA from these samples and use it to identify and confirm novel gene mutations and to identify genes which regulate the severity of motor neuron/neuromuscular diseases.

There is an unmet demand for the evaluation of nocturnal hypoventilation in children with NMD. An ambulatory screening tool that can reliably facilitate timely diagnosis and treatment in these children would be invaluable. If an ambulatory, at home, tcCO2 monitoring device is shown to be diagnostically accurate, sleep physicians would be able to triage children on existing waiting lists and optimize screening of nocturnal hypoventilation as recommended by international guidelines.

The combination of short quantitatively assessing muscular function and balance in combination with short clinical scores, can be a new valid approach to evaluate the patient risk of fall and help to create a quick checkup test to prescribe an appropriate assistive device. The primary goal of this project is to provide a short battery of clinical assessments used to determine risk of falling for patients with neuromuscular diseases (NMD) based on correlation between clinical assessments between two groups of NMD patients and scales used to assess risk of falling for patients.

Neuromuscular diseases are rare diseases for which significant progress has been made in the context of diagnosis thanks to advances in molecular techniques, but the intimate mechanisms of lesion formation remain poorly understood. Advances in cellular and molecular biology, the development of a few animal models, such as transgenic mice, which make it possible to mimic human pathology have made it possible to better understand the physiopathology of these diseases. However, they still do so very imperfectly and incompletely, making it even more necessary than ever to study diseased human muscle tissue to find new avenues of research or to confirm results obtained by experimentation. The purpose of this collection of tissue samples for neuro-muscular purposes is to collect such samples under the best conditions in order to promote basic and translational research on muscle diseases. This is why the CHU de Bordeaux wishes to keep the remainders of samples taken as part of the treatment to constitute a collection of biological samples and associated data kept according to quality standards and in compliance with the regulations in force.

The purpose of this research repository is to collect, store, and share with other researchers any tissues that subjects with all types of neuromuscular disease are willing to donate. These samples will be stored at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and will be used for future research with this population.

Objectives: To establish if physiotherapists can use the waveform traces from the cough assist machine to work out when patients are having an abnormal airway response to cough assist To establish how cough assist device settings, particularly in breath and cough pressures affect a patient's response to using the cough assist device To provide some clinical guidance to physiotherapists on methods for assessing and treating abnormal airway responses to cough assist devices Methodology: Subjects will complete breathing tests; spirometry, peak cough flow (PCF) and sniff nasal inspiratory pressure (SNIP) to establish baseline breathing function and rule out anyone with breathing conditions. A nasal camera will be used to look at the voice box at rest. Cough assist will be delivered via a face mask which will allow for simultaneous use of the nasal camera and cough assist carried out in the same way as another research team have done previously. The nasal camera will be attached to a video camera to allow recording, analysis and documentation of the observations. The cough assist protocol will be delivered by a physiotherapist experienced in delivering cough assist. Cough assist waveforms will be downloaded into Care Orchestrator software (Philips Respironics, Murraysville, USA) and reviewed at the same time as the nose camera recordings to establish if voice box responses can be identified from the waveform patterns. For confirmation of Care Orchestrator software waveforms, a device that records airflow during breathing (spirometer) will be connected (Alpha touch, Vitalograph, Ennis, Ireland) into the cough assist circuit in the same way another research team has before.

To determine the quality of life of patients living with chronic respiratory failure and the impact interventions have on it.

We are studying the genetics of human cardiovascular and neuromuscular disease. There are many different genetic regions that have been associated with the development of cardiomyopathy. An equal number of genetic regions have been associated with muscular dystrophy and there is overlap because some of the identical genes, when mutated, produce both cardiomyopathy and muscular dystrophy. We are working to identify genes and gene mutations associated with cardiomyopathy, arrhythmias and muscular dystrophy. We propose to screen these samples for mutations in genes known to be involved in these disorders.

The purpose of this study is to identify new genes responsible for neuromuscular disorders and study muscle tissue of patient with known neuromuscular disease, as well as their family members. We are interested in recruiting many types of neuromuscular disease including; Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), Becker muscular dystrophy (BMD), and limb-girdle muscle dystrophy (LGMD). There are still many patients diagnosed with muscular dystrophy with no causative gene implicated in their disease. Using molecular genetics to unravel basis of these neuromuscular disorders will lead to more accurate diagnosis/prognosis of these disorders which will lead to potential therapies.