Active clinical trials for "Neuromuscular Diseases"

"Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are computer-based systems that acquire brain signals, analyze them, and translate them into commands that are relayed to an output device to carry out a desired action. BCIs represent a very active and promising field of research among devices for people with severe motor disabilities. As the currently available systems correspond to research prototypes, they are not adapted to daily live situations. On the other hand, some systems have recently been commercialized, principally for video games but they are not satisfactory for use as a substitute technology in disability. A BCI's prototype for alternative communication using a virtual keyboard, the P300 Speller, has been developed by the National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (Athena team - Nice University). This prototype includes an EEG-cap with gel based active electrodes. A recent study conducted on 20 patients with ALS (University Hospital, Nice) demonstrated the usability of the system and the patient satisfaction concerning the ease of use and utility. To achieve a system that can be used in daily live in severely disabled patients, technical developments are necessary. The investigators have conceptualized and developed an ergonomic, comfortable, headset, including dry electrodes to allow a prolonged use of the system. The purpose of the study conducted all along the development of the headset is to improve the developed system until a successful system is achieved. This study is a monocentric usability study conducted on ALS people.

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.

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.

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.

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.