Active clinical trials for "Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder"

A number of studies from the literature suggest important behavioral, psychosocial, or radiologic changes occur following significant neurologic events or interventions such as stroke, neurosurgery, medications, radiation, systemic therapy, or injury. The purpose of this study is to describe these changes with advanced neurologic imaging and targeted neurologic and neuropsychiatric assessments. This is a non-interventional observational study of minimal risk to participants as there is no medical intervention. The results of this study will be used to inform patients, scientists, and society in the development of future treatments.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder effects approximately 2-3% of the population. The only established first-line treatments for OCD are cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) with exposure/response prevention and serotonin reuptake inhibitor medications (SRIs). Approximately 30-40% of patients fail to respond to either modality and few patients experience complete symptom resolution. Up to 25% of patients have difficulty tolerating CBT, and the risk of relapse after therapies remains significant. Symptoms of OCD include unwanted, distressing thoughts and rituals such as excessive washing of hands or other body parts, rechecking things such as locks or switches because of obsessional doubt, and avoidance of anxiety-provoking situations. In some cases, compulsions can consume several hours per day and in the most extreme cases can involve most of the patient's waking hours (e.g. washing hands hundreds of times per day, 18-hour showers). Medical complications may result from repeated washing or other repetitive behaviors. Significant social and occupational impairment can result from this disorder and some patients are housebound or even bed-ridden. Effective evidence-based treatments include behavior therapy and certain medications. Despite these therapies, a significant number of patients are treatment resistant and suffer persistent, debilitating symptoms. In severe cases, neurosurgical intervention is sometimes performed to alleviate symptoms. A common surgical option is deep brain stimulation (DBS), a procedure that involves placing two electrodes in a specific region in the brain and connecting them to a pacemaker-like device implanted under the skin in the upper chest. The clinician adjusts the stimulation parameters on the device to find the settings that best relieve symptoms. One of the challenges of treating a psychiatric disorder is the absence of reliable and valid biomarkers for diagnosing and objectively monitoring treatment outcomes. There is also problem of heterogeneity, which introduces additional barriers to predicting who will respond best to a particular treatment. A better understanding of the dysfunction in key brain circuits underlying OCD symptomatology will allow us to improve outcomes with DBS. The pathophysiology of OCD is associated with dysfunction in prefrontal cortico-basal ganglia circuits. The electrodes of the DBS system are placed at a critical hub within this circuit. This target is called the ventral capsule/ventral striatum (VC/VS). DBS targeting the VC/VS is approved for the treatment of severe OCD under an FDA Humanitarian Device Exemption (HDE). In this project, the investigators will recruit patients treated with DBS for OCD under the standard clinical (HDE) pathway. The FDA/HDE-approved device for these procedures is the Medtronic Percept DBS system. The Percept implanted pulse generator (IPG; pacemaker-like device mentioned above that delivers stimulation) has the ability to not only stimulate, but also record electrical activity measured from the brain electrodes, store the recordings in memory, and wirelessly transmit them to the clinician. The investigators will ask consenting patients to perform and transmit these recordings to the investigators for analysis. The investigators hope that these recordings will help them understand the relationship between electrical network activity in the brain and patient symptoms. A closer understanding of this relationship may eventually enable the investigators to make better informed programming adjustments and therefore achieve better symptom control. The main objective is to obtain recordings from the VC/VS, a key network hub in OCD, in patients already implanted with a DBS system for severe OCD. The Investigators will use these recordings to better understand the relationship between brain activity and OCD symptoms, with the hope that this understanding will lead to more effective utilization of DBS therapy to treat severe OCD.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a chronic and disabling disorder that costs the economy over $2 billion annually and represents a significant public health problem. This study aims to build on our understanding of aberrant emotional processing in OCD. The proposed project tests whether a computerized training aimed to alter emotional processes, can relieve repetitive thoughts and behaviors.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) affects 2-3% of the population and leads to a great deal of suffering. Many patients benefit from established treatments, the mainstay of which are cognitive behavioral therapy and a group of antidepressant medications known as serotonin reuptake inhibitors. However, 20-30% of patients get minimal benefit from these established therapeutic strategies. New avenues of treatment are urgently needed. Existing medications for obsessive-compulsive disorder affect the neurotransmitters serotonin or dopamine; but increasing evidence suggests that functional disruptions of a different neurotransmitter, glutamate, may contribute to some cases of OCD. The researchers are therefore interested in using medications that target glutamate as novel treatment options for those OCD patients who do not benefit from established treatments. One such medication is the drug N-Acetylcysteine, whose glutamatergic antagonistic properties may be effective in reducing the glutamatergic hyperactivity that is thought to contribute to the pathophysiology of OCD and major depressive disorder (MDD). Riluzole, which is FDA approved for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease) is also a glutamatergic agent. There is evidence that riluzole possesses anti-depressant, anti-obsessional, and anti-anxiety properties. The modulation of glutamatergic activity is a promising new approach to the treatment of mood disorders. The researchers are therefore now recruiting patients to participate in a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of N-Acetylcysteine, added to whatever other OCD medications they are taking.

This will be a 12-week open-label pilot treatment study for children and adolescents (ages 6-17) who meet DSM-IV criteria for bipolar disorder (BPD) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) who are adequately mood stabilized on a stable regimen based on standard clinical care. Specific hypotheses are as follows: Hypothesis 1: Children and adolescents with comorbid OCD and BPD who have achieved adequate mood stabilization using a naturalistic clinical practice approach, will benefit from an FDA-approved selective seratonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) on their OCD symptoms in a clinically meaningful way without exacerbation of bipolar symptoms.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of Levetiracetam augmentation relative to Placebo in SSRI non-remitters with obsessive compulsive disorder. The hypothesis is that anxiolytic effect of Levetiracetam is more beneficial when adding with a SSRI.

This study evaluates the efficacy and acceptability of two cognitive-behavioural interventions for reassurance seeking behaviour in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), a family accommodation reduction protocol vs. a novel support-seeking protocol. Half of participants will be randomly assigned to participate in the support-seeking intervention, whereas the other half will participate in the family accommodation reduction intervention.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a chronic and disabling anxiety disorder and a leading cause of worldwide disability that presents a significant public health problem. Treatment options are limited and many OCD patients fail to respond completely or quickly to standard treatments, including pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy. At this time, patients who fail to respond to treatment with serotonergic drugs, augmenting antipsychotic agents, and behavioral therapy, have few additional treatment options aside from deep brain stimulation. Therefore, despite advances in current pharmacological and behavioral treatments, and the utility of serotonergic drugs, it is likely that other neurotransmitter systems are involved and that targeting these systems may increase treatment efficacy. Despite little evidence for serotonergic dysfunction in OCD, there is significant evidence that glutamatergic dysregulation may contribute to the development and progression of the disorder. Also, preliminary studies suggest that glutamatergic modulators (i.e. riluzole and d-cycloserine), particularly agents acting at the NMDA receptor (i.e. memantine), may be useful in OCD. The NMDA antagonist, ketamine, has demonstrated rapid effects when delivered as a single intravenous (IV) dose in depressed patients. Therefore, the objective of the current study is to investigate the safety and efficacy of a single dose of IV ketamine in treatment-resistant OCD.

The neuropsychological profiles of children treated with standard CBT for OCD are evaluated.

This study is to assess the efficacy and safety of two doses of ondansetron (0.5 mg and 0.75 mg) relative to placebo when administered twice daily as adjunctive therapy for adult patients with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) who have not adequately responded to treatment with a serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SRI).