Active clinical trials for "Schizophrenia"

The proposed project is based on the observation that schizophrenia is characterized by a chronic pro-inflammatory state, which contributes to the severity of a number of the clinical manifestations of the illness, including cognitive impairments, the treatment of which represents a critically important unmet therapeutic need.

Schizophrenia affects about 0.7% of the population. Poor insight, which is common in this disease, linked to poor drug compliance is leads to rehospitalisation with major impact on quality of life. Indeed, many patients relapse with exacerbation of symptoms. Psychoeducation can improve therapeutic alliance and medication compliance. In this context, an individual psycho-education program (PEPITS) has been developed. PEPITS carried out by nurses during the initial stages of hospitalisation. The hypothesis is that PEPITS program will decrease relapse and improve the compliance and insight and and so the quality of life.

Non-invasive neuromodulation, such as transcranial direct current stimulation ( tDCS) , is emerging as an important therapeutic tool with documented effects on brain circuitry, yet little is understood about h ow it changes cognition. In particular, tDCS may have a critical role to play in generalization, that is how training in one domain generalizes to unlearned or unpracticed domains. This problem has resonance for disorders with cognitive deficits, such as schizophrenia. Understanding how tDCS affects brain circuity is critical to the design and application of effective interventions, especially if the effects are different for healthy vs. psychiatric populations. In previous research, one clue to the mechanism underlying increased learning and generalization with tDCS was provided by neuroimaging data from subjects with schizophrenia undergoing cognitive training where increases in thalamocortical (prefrontal) functional connectivity (FC) predicted greater generalization. The premise of this proposal is that increases in thalamocortical FC are associated with the generalization of cognitive training, and tDCS facilitates these increases. The overarching goals of this proposal are to deploy neuroimaging and cognitive testing to understand how tDCS with cognitive training affect thalamocortical circuitry in individuals with and without psychosis and to examine variability in response within both groups. Study 1 will compare right prefrontal, left prefrontal and sham tDCS during concurrent cognitive training over 12 weeks in 90 healthy controls. Study 2 will be similar in all aspects but will examine 90 patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and include clinical assessments. Results of the study will provide crucial information about location of stimulation, length of treatment, modeled dosage, trajectory and durability needed to guide future research and interventions for cognitive impairments.

The purpose of this study is to assess the long-term symptomatic response (Visit 2 [Week 1] to Visit 14/Week 66 [End of Study {EOS}]) measured by change in the Clinical Global Impressions -Severity for Schizophrenia (CGI-SS) in participants with schizophrenia who are treated in Rwandan real-world healthcare settings with the antipsychotic regimen that starts with oral anti-psychotic (AP) formulation followed by continued treatment with (paliperidone palmitate 1-month [PP1M] and 3-month [PP3M] formulations).

cTBS is a promising novel intervention, which have strong potentials on moderating disease syndrome, suck as verbal hallucination, and cognitive deficits in schizophrenia, as it has been proved for the treatment of depression. Therefore, the investigators designed this randomized controlled clinical trial to evaluate the efficacy and safety of cTBS on prevention and treatment for cognitive deficiency, psychotic syndrome and metabolic side-effects in drug-naive first episode individual with schizophrenia.

Since 1990s, stimulation of prefrontal cortex (PFC) has shown therapeutic effects on auditory hallucinations as well as negative symptoms of schizophrenia. However, previous studies have reported mixed or negative results. Majority of the repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) studies to date has set the target of cortical stimulation based on scalp site. Recently introduced method, navigated transcranial magnetic stimulation (nTMS) integrates the individual MRI data, and thus allows more precise targeting on brain cortical regions enhancing the efficacy of rTMS. Previous EEG studies have suggested reduced alpha band activity in patients with schizophrenia. Some recent studies using alpha (α) EEG guided TMS for treating positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia have demonstrated promising results. The aim of the study is to investigate the efficacy of navigated individualized αTMS in treatment-resistant patients with schizophrenia. Approximately fifty patients with DSM-IV schizophrenia will be enrolled in this randomized, double-blind, sham-controlled study. The patients will receive 13 - 15 session of αTMS to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), as adjunctive therapy, for 3 weeks. We assess patients via the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), Clinical Global Impression (CGI) and neurocognitive test battery at baseline, 5 days after and 3 months after treatment. Serum and plasma levels of brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) are assayed at pre and post treatment weeks.

The purpose of this study is to assess the effect of PAS in schizophrenia in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) assess the effect of PAS induced long-term potentiation (LTP) on the performance of patients with schizophrenia on a cognitive task related to DLFPC.

Schizophrenia affects 2.4 million Americans and causes significant individual and societal costs. Cognitive deficits including poor working memory arise early in the course of illness, account for poor long-term outcomes and have been difficult to treat with available treatments. The investigators are proposing to develop a novel, computer-based brain training to improve working memory in schizophrenia patients, which, if successful could have significant personal, societal, and economic impact.

Profession-led psycho-education programs for people with schizophrenia are evidenced to improve patients' knowledge about the illness, mental state and relapse rate. Nevertheless, other benefits to patients, for example, their functioning and insight into illness or to be substantive in a longer term (>12 months) are inconsistent and uncertain, especially in Asian populations. This single-blind multi-site randomized clinical trial was to test the effects of a peer-expert-led psycho-education group intervention (in addition to usual care) for adult patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders over a 24-month follow-up, in comparison to a profession-led psycho-education group or treatment-as-usual only.

Adults with serious mental illness (SMI) are disproportionately affected by medical comorbidity, earlier onset of disease, and 10 to 25 years reduced life expectancy compared to the general population. These high rates of morbidity and early mortality are associated with inadequately managed medical and psychiatric illnesses. A recent systematic review found nine effective self-management interventions that address medical and psychiatric illnesses in adults with SMI. However, there has been limited adoption of these interventions due to both provider and consumer-based factors. Provider-based barriers consist of the lack of an adequate workforce with the capacity, time, and knowledge of effective approaches to self-management support for adults with SMI and chronic health conditions. Consumer-based barriers associated with limited participation in self-management programs include lack of access, engagement, and ongoing community-based support for persons with SMI. Peer support specialists have the potential to address these barriers as they comprise one of the fastest growing sectors of the mental health workforce, have "lived experience" in self-management practices, and offer access to support in the community. However, challenges need to be resolved for peers to be effective providers of evidence-based interventions. For example, peers are frequently trained to provide "peer support" described as "giving and receiving help founded on key principles of respect, shared responsibility, and mutual agreement of what is helpful". Peer support has been associated with increased sense of control, ability to make changes, and decreased psychiatric symptoms. Despite benefits, peer support does not adhere to evidence-based practices for psychiatric and medical self-management and does not follow protocols that ensure fidelity and systematically monitor outcomes. The investigators hypothesize that mobile technology has the potential to overcome these limitations of peer support by providing real-time guidance in fidelity adherent delivery of a peer-delivered, technology-assisted evidence-based self-management intervention (PDTA-IIMR). The investigator will build the necessary expertise to pursue a career developing and testing novel approaches to peer-delivered evidence-based self-management interventions. Training will include: development of peer-delivered interventions; development and design of mobile health-supported interventions; and intervention clinical trials research. Concurrently, this study includes refinement of the intervention protocol with input from peers and consumers and conducting a pilot study evaluating the feasibility and potential effectiveness of PDTA-IIMR compared to routine peer support for N=6 peers and N=40 adults with SMI and chronic health conditions. Outcomes include feasibility, medical and psychiatric self-management skills, functional ability, and mortality risk factors and examine self-efficacy and social support as mechanisms on outcomes.