Active clinical trials for "Alzheimer Disease"

Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and Alzheimer's Disease-Related Dementias (ADRD) not only exact a heavy toll on patients, they also impose an enormous emotional, physical, and financial burden on unpaid, often family, caregivers. The strain of providing care for a loved one diagnosed with AD, often across several years, is associated with elevated depression risk and poorer overall health. Emotion regulation skills represent an ideal target for psychological intervention to promote healthy coping in ADRD caregivers. The project seeks to use an experimental medicine approach to test the efficacy and biobehavioral mechanisms of a novel, relatively brief, targeted, scalable, smartphone-based cognitive emotion regulation intervention aimed at improving psychological outcomes (i.e., reducing perceived stress, caregiver burden, and depressive symptoms) in ADRD unpaid primary caregivers as well as examine potential benefits of the caregiver intervention on quality of life in care recipients. Cognitive reappraisal is the ability to modify the trajectory of an emotional response by thinking about and appraising emotional information in an alternative, more adaptive way. Reappraisal can be operationalized via two primary tactics: psychological distancing (i.e. appraising an emotional stimulus as an objective, impartial observer) and reinterpretation (i.e., imagining a better outcome than what initially seemed apparent). The project will investigate the efficacy and underlying biobehavioral mechanisms of a novel, one-week cognitive reappraisal intervention in this population, with follow-up assessments at 2 weeks, 4 weeks, and 3 months. ADRD unpaid primary caregivers will be randomly assigned to receive training in either distancing, reinterpretation, or a no regulation natural history control condition, with ecological momentary assessments of self-reported positive and negative affect, remotely- collected psychophysiological health-related biomarkers (i.e., heart rate variability data) using pre-mailed Polar H10 chest bands, and health-related questionnaire reports. Distancing training is expected to result in longitudinal reductions in self-reported negative affect, longitudinal increases in positive affect, and longitudinal increases in HRV that are larger than those attributable to reinterpretation training and no-regulation control training.

The goal of this pilot study is to improve the STAR-Caregivers Virtual Training & Follow-up (STAR-VTF) intervention for Latino caregivers of people living with dementia. The main objectives are to: (1) culturally adapt STAR-VTF online training modules, (2) pilot test Latino caregivers' responses to the adapted online training modules, and (3) develop an online survey to collect caregiver outcomes in a future study. Participants will receive the STAR-VTF intervention and asked to complete online surveys and participate in an exit interview to provide feedback on their experience.

This study is a randomized, controlled trial (RCT) to evaluate the effect of Brain CareNotes (a mobile health application) on the burden experienced by unpaid caregivers of patients with dementia and on the behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) displayed by care recipients. Over 39 months, the trial will enroll 160 caregivers of community-dwelling patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease or a related dementia (ADRD). Caregivers will be randomized to use the Brain CareNotes app or an attention control education-only app for 12 months, with usage reminders.

The purpose of this research is pilot test a nurse led intervention previously used in patients with pulmonary fibrosis and their caregivers in a new population (persons living with Mild Cognitive Impairment or Alzheimer's disease and their caregivers. The researchers hypothesize improving advanced care planning in this population will result in enhanced quality of life over illness trajectory and improve safety for community dwelling PWD/CG dyads. Findings from this study will inform additional necessary adaptations required prior to conducting larger scale powered randomized control trial.

The goal of this clinical trial is to evaluate Kinto's Care Coaching intervention for dementia caregivers. The main questions it aims to answer are: Does the intervention help caregivers to address their general caregiving goals Does the intervention help caregivers to address their financial caregiving goals Participants will have access to: One-on-one care coaching sessions (via zoom) Up to 6 weekly support groups with other caregivers A variety of digital resources through Kinto's mobile app Researchers will compare intervention and control groups to see if the program supports caregivers' general and financial caregiving needs. The efficacy of the intervention also will be examined on key outcomes.

The purpose of this study is to assess the safety and feasibility of administering standard of care monthly Aduhelm (Aducanumab) infusion therapy in combination with opening the blood-brain barrier with the Exablate Model 4000 Type 2 device in patients with mild Alzheimer's disease (AD) or mild cognitive impairment (MCI).

Loss of independence, cognitive decline, and difficulties in everyday function are areas of great concern for older adults and their families. Cognitive training is one low cost, noninvasive training intervention that has repeatedly demonstrated reliable transfer effects to maintained cognition, everyday function, health, and most recently, a 29% reduction in incident dementia. Importantly, many of these everyday function effects are maintained across five to ten years including: maintained driving mobility, 50% reduction in at-fault vehicle crashes, and maintained Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADL). Although clearly an important and effective intervention, the moderators and mechanisms underlying this program are unknown. The overall objective in this planning grant is to lay the conceptual and methodological foundation to explore cognitive, psychosocial, lifestyle behaviors, and biomarker mechanisms and moderators of two forms of conceptually driven cognitive training. Additionally, this study will examine how cognitive and psychosocial factors within daily life account for the transfer of cognitive training to everyday function. We will use a factorial design to randomize adults ages 55-85 to 0, 10, 20, 30, or 40 hours of two forms of cognitive training, a combined training, or an active comparison condition (Phase 1). An additional sample of participants will complete 20 hours of two forms of cognitive training or the active comparison group as well as provide blood samples (Phase 2). Across the study period, participants will complete cognitive, health, lifestyle, and psychosocial assessments at baseline, posttest, and approximately three month follow-up assessments in person or remotely using a study-provided laptop. Additionally, all participants will be asked to complete daily cognitive, health, lifestyle, and psychosocial measures daily using study-provided smartphones. This study will allow us to test the feasibility of our enrollment, assessment and training protocols for a future multisite clinical trial. This exploratory study is the first of its kind and will be used to provide important data relevant to a future larger randomized controlled trial examining mediators of cognitive training in a representative sample of adults. This information will assist in the future development of more effective home- and community-based interventions that maintain everyday function.

Progressive age-related cognitive deficits occurring in both AD and DS have been connected to the degeneration of several neuronal populations, but mechanisms are not fully elucidated. The most consistent neuronal losses throughout the progression of AD are seen in cholinergic neurons where these losses negatively affect cognition, particularly in attention, learning, and memory formation. Evidence of reduced cholinergic integrity in DS is largely limited to animal models and post-mortem human data. The investigators propose to use molecular, functional, and structural biomarkers to assess the cholinergic integrity in adults with DS. The investigators anticipate using the data gathered in this pilot study to inform future study designs to determine AD risk stratification in DS by identifying individuals who show an accelerated decline in cholinergic integrity that correlates with cognitive and neurobehavioral changes. Also, our cholinergic biomarkers may identify whether individuals with DS are likely to respond to pro-cholinergic interventions, including the novel cholinergic modulators that are being developed to enhance cholinergic-sensitive cognitive functioning. The investigators anticipate using the data gathered here to inform future treatment studies in TRC-DS and beyond where novel cholinergic treatments may offer opportunities for early intervention in DS and be complementary to disease-modifying approaches such as anti-amyloid treatments.

The purpose of this project is to test the impact of different forms of technology (virtual reality vs. video chat) on quality of life and family relationships in older adults who reside in senior living communities and an adult child who lives at a distance. The study will also investigate whether responses to the technology and quality of life outcomes depend on older adults' level of cognitive impairment.

The purpose of this study is to design and test a decision-making program that is tailored to support adult daughters making healthcare decisions for their parents who are living with memory loss to improve the quality of life of African American families. There are two phases of this research study. The first phase will collect information by surveys and/or interviews. The surveys and interviews will ask questions about demographics (e.g., age, race/ethnicity), culture, health, family dynamics, caregiving, and healthcare experiences. The surveys will be completed by all eligible adult daughters and parents with memory loss in pairs. The interviews will be completed by a smaller number of pairs and by all former adult daughter caregivers. The general scope of topics is caregiving experiences, cultural identity, healthcare decisions for persons living with Alzheimer's disease, and related dementias, health, and well-being. The research team will identify and examine key factors that will lead to designing and testing the feasibility of a culturally tailored prototype intervention for African American dementia dyads/families of persons living with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease and related dementias.