Active clinical trials for "Alzheimer Disease"

The purpose of this study is to measure the adherence to "Siel bleu" balance exercises in patients with Alzheimer's disease, while taking into account the disease stages.

Alzheimer's disease is characterised by a loss of cognitive functions and behavioural problems as set out under the term "Behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD)". The impact of BPSD in everyday life has heavy consequences for the patient and their family. The precocity of incidence, the frequency and the intensity of the BPSD are associated with a rapid decline in cognitive functions, an alteration in the activities of daily living, and a decrease in the quality of life for both the patient and the helper, an increased risk of hospitalisation and of institutionalisation as well as an increase in the cost to the health system. A greater understanding of the risk factors for the occurence of the BPSD would better allow the detection of patients who are particularly at risk for BPSD, to anticipate the crisis situations by proposing early and adapted care, and to better target the medicinal therapies. Certain observational arguments or results of retrospective studies speak in favour of the role of the basic personality in the occurence of BPSD in Alzheimer's disease. The investigators propose to clarify this role through a prospective study.

The purpose of the study is to determine the long-term safety and exploratory efficacy of NEUROSTEM®-AD, administered via an open brain surgery to subjects with dementia of the Alzheimer's type, who were eligible for and enrolled in the earlier part of the phase I. Aside from the subjects who completed the earlier part of the Phase I, 3 additional subjects with comparable demographics and disease characteristics as the treatment group will be enrolled into a control group, followed-up for 3 months, and compared for various disease progression indicators with the treatment group. The hypothesis is that NEUROSTEM®-AD is safe and effective in the treatment of dementia of the Alzheimer's type.

Beta amyloid immunoreactivity is probably due to a significant number of Ab catabolites corresponding to N-terminally truncated and Cterminally truncated or extended forms which display distinct propensity to aggregation. Very few things are known concerning the mechanisms and proteases by which they are generated. Furthermore, the link between truncation and toxicity has not been delineated. Finally, little is known concerning Ab fragments in biological fluids and whether they could be seen as early biomarkers and thereby, as putative targets for AD diagnostic. The present project will allow to examine the human biological samples and to identify various cohorts after complete clinical evaluation.

The purpose of this study is to develop small molecule radio-labeled probes of beta-amyloid, to be used with positron emission tomography (PET) for early detection and treatment monitoring of Alzheimer disease (AD). The study hypothesis is that PET imaging of small molecule probes, in the form of novel fluorescent dyes with radioactive labels, will demonstrate cerebral patterns in patients with AD that are distinct from those of age-matched persons who are cognitively intact.

The research is aimed at exploring the application of novel tracking technique for the study of spatial activity among dementia patients and its implication on their families. The study sample will be composed of three groups of volunteers, each including100 participants aged over 60 years. The first group will include MCI (Mild Cognitive Impairment) patients. The second group will include patients that suffer from mild dementia. The third group will include age matched healthy participants. The tracking equipment will be a GPS apparatus of 450 gms that will be carried by the participants for 24 hours along 2-4 weeks. The GPS data will be transferred via the cellular network to operator center at the Hebrew university at Jerusalem, and will be documented in assigned data files. This monitoring procedure will be held every year and along a period of five years. The impact of the patient behavior on the care giver will be studied by means of five interviews along the tracking period.

Investigators propose in this study to evaluate prospective memory (MP) in all its complexity as well as the processes, cognitive and brain, the underlying. Specifically, investigators propose to evaluate the evolution of the MP during normal aging and Alzheimer's disease (AD) to identify the cognitive and brain processes underlying this development. To do this, this study will have to include healthy subjects, 18 to 95 years, patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and patients with probable AD. All participants will undergo a series of examinations, both neuropsychological and brain imaging.

PRIMARY OBJECTIVES -Establish a registry for Alzheimer's disease (AD) and subcortical ischemic vascular dementia (SIVD) STUDY DESIGN -This is a non-randomized, natural history, observational, registry study. SAMPLE SIZE AND RECRUITMENT - Five hundred subjects will be enrolled at each clinical site (50 NC, 200 with MCI, 50 with AD, 100 with vMCI, and 100 with SIVD) SUMMARY OF KEY ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA Newly enrolled subjects will be between 50-80 (inclusive) years of age. 1) Cognitively Normal Subjects 2) MCI subjects 3) AD subjects 4) vMCI or SIVD PROCEDURES Recruited subjects will have clinical/cognitive assessments, biomarker and genetic sample collection, and imaging. Subjects will be followed up for 36 months from the baseline visit. All assessments are to be performed every year from baseline(0, 12, 24, 36 months), except; 1) FDG-PET and amyloid-PET will be performed every two years, i.e., on baseline and at 24 month visit. 2) CSF collection will also be performed on baseline and at 24 months visit. 3) Clinical/cognitive assessment and MRI evaluation will additionally be done at 6 months from baseline to determine short term change. OUTCOME MEASURES Group differences for each clinical, cognitive, biochemical, and imaging measurement. Rate of conversion or change of disease severity will be evaluated among all groups Correlations among biomarkers and biomarker changes

Butyrylcholinesterase (BuChE) activity is increasing in Alzheimer Disease (AD) process (Lane et al., 2006). BuChE wild type has stronger butyrylcholine esterase activity than BuChE K variant allele and this strong activity can affect AD brain negatively by choline depletion. Rivastigmine has unique dual action - acetylcholine esterase inhibition and butyrylcholine esterase inhibition. Therefore, rivastigmine can lower serum butyrylcholine esterase activity and delay functional decrease of Fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG PET) images in AD patients with BuChE wild type allele by strong BuChE inhibition. It suggests that rivastigmine can affect brain function differently by BuChE genotype in AD. Therefore, we will try to find the different changes of serum butyrylcholine esterase activity by ELISA and functional and structural changes of brain between BuChE wild type and K-variant type by FDG PET and MRI pre and post images after 12 month use of rivastigmine. Primary objective: the mean changes of Standardized Uptake Values (SUVmean) in PET imaging the mean changes of serum BuChE activity between BuChE wild type and K-variant type. Secondary objectives: the mean changes of cortical thickness in brain MRI the cognitive changes in Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale-cognitive subscale (ADAS-cog) the cognitive changes in Mini-Mental State Exam (MMSE) the daily function changes by Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study - Activities of Daily Living (ADCS-ADL) the behavioural changes by Caregiver-Administered Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) the disease severity changes by Clinical Dementia Rating Scale-Sum of Boxes (CDR-SB) between BuChE wild type and K-variant type.

RATIONALE of the project. Adults with Down syndrome (DS) present severe sleep disorders that are under recognized by caregivers. Aging in DS population increases the prevalence of both Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) and Alzheimer´s disease (AD) dementia at much higher rates than in the general population. AD increases the risk of sleep disturbances and OSA, which in turn worsen cognitive performance and behavioral function. Our hypothesis is that adults with DS and AD dementia will present a higher prevalence of sleep disorders (sleep disruption, sleep circadian disorders and OSA) than in DS without dementia. There are no data evaluating nocturnal sleep in adults with DS with AD dementia. The main objective is to evaluate the prevalence of sleep disturbances in adult subjects with DS and AD dementia, by means of subjective and objectives sleep measures.