Active clinical trials for "Schizophrenia"

This is a 49 weeks open-label randomized controlled study. Patients with schizophrenia and violence risk will be enrolled in the study. A community-based long-acting antipsychotics-treated management model will be applied to the experimental group, which means that professional psychiatrists will provide guidance to primary-level mental health workers on the psychotic treatment, and monthly-injected long-acting antipsychotic, paliperidone palmitate, will be used in the schizophrenia treatment. Subjects in control group will be treated and cared as usual.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) serves as an effective adjuvant modality for major depressive disorder, schizophrenia, or bipolar affective disorder refractory to or contraindicated to psychopharmacological treatment. Anesthetics have been introduced into ECT sessions to alleviate ECT-inducing discomfort sensation, tachycardia, arrhythmia, hypertension, and anxiety. Propofol is able to rapidly cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB), which leads to rapid onset of sedation and hypnosis. Meanwhile, propofol has hemodynamic depressant effect and attenuates hypertensive surge during ECT. Characteristics mentioned above make propofol one of widely used anesthetics for anesthetized ECT. However, propofol is also well known for anticonvulsant property. Thus, dosage of electrical stimulus may be increased to achieve ideal seizure quality in this setting, which also leads to higher risk of subsequent cognitive impairment or other complications. Ketamine has also been widely used in the induction of anesthesia for the treatment of major depressive disease in recent years. It has been found to increase the permeability and therapeutic effect of antidepressants. Compared to traditional Barbiturate drugs or propofol, do not increase the threshold of electricity required by electroporation, which can reduce the time required for symptom relief of those drugs, It is a viable alternative induction drug. There have been confirmed that ketamine combine propofol can be used for electroconvulsive treatment in patients with major depression and bipolar disorder, and even better Electroconvulsive quality can be obtained. Reduce the number of Electroconvulsive treatments and reduce the duration of treatment. However, the current literature has not yet verified the clinical benefit of ketamine combine propofol as an anesthetic induction drug in patients with schizophrenia who are receiving electroconvulsive therapy, and it is worthy of further study. In the investigator's clinical practice, the purpose of this experiment is to explore: compared with propofol base anesthesia alone, and the combine use of ketamine and propofol may reduce the threshold of seizure, improve the quality of Electroconvulsive therapy and shorten the course of treatment. The combine use and titrate the drugs helps to reduce the side effects of both ketamine and propofol (such as cardiovascular side effects and positive symptoms) , achieve better Electroconvulsive therapy and effects.

Negative symptoms are core symptoms in schizophrenia which play an important role in clinical outcomes and impede patients to return to society. Anti-psychotic medicines have shown limited effect in improving negative symptoms and cognitive functioning, whereas non-invasive neuromodulations, i.e. , transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS), have shown promising potentials. Recently new evidence of brain structural and functional alterations has been provided by neuroimaging studies. Brady RO et al. found cerebellar-prefrontal network connectivity was related to negative symptoms in schizophrenia. It provides clues for developing a new tACS protocol targeting improving negative symptoms, in which dual-channel high-density alternating current stimulations were delivered over both the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and cerebellum simultaneously.

Interventional study using Cannabidiol containing cigarettes as replacement of usual cigarettes Reduction of enforcement measures, improved acute treatment, harm reduction, and improvement of psychotic symptoms

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of atypical antipsychotics on cardiac safety. The secondary purpose was to understand the rate of QTc prolongation in electrocardiogram induced by atypical antipsychotics. And try to construct the model of cardiac monitoring index. We conducted a randomized trial in which patients with schizophrenia who were first on or off medication for more than two weeks took a single atypical antipsychotic (Risperidone, Aripiprazole, Ziprasidone, Amisulpride, Quetiapine) for 12 weeks and monitored changes in biochemical, electrocardiogram and other indicators. And then 50 patients with adverse cardiac reactions (ADRs) taking antipsychotics were selected to review the data, analyze and construct a monitoring model. We hypothesized that atypical antipsychotics with different mechanisms of action have different effects on cardiac safety in patients with schizophrenia, and that they are applicable to different populations. The monitoring index model can reduce the occurrence of cardiotoxicity and improve the prognosis.

Objective of the trial is to study if famotidine add-on treatment is more effective than placebo add-on in reducing symptoms of schizophrenia among patients receiving insufficient response to ongoing antipsychotic treatment.

Sensory gating is defined as the automatic process of inhibiting brain response to repeated auditory sounds. Infants who brains respond similarly to two identical sounds presented about 1/2 second apart are more likely to have later problems with attention than infants who suppress response to the second sound. This study will examine whether providing a nutritional supplement, phosphatidylcholine, for two months in infancy will result in an increased likelihood of developing more robust sensory gating.

Current Canadian Clinical Practice guidelines emphasize the need for effective psychosocial adjuncts to pharmacotherapy for schizophrenia (Canadian Psychiatric Association 2005). This randomized control trial seeks to contribute to the body of evidence supporting psychosocial treatments by assessing the effectiveness of metacognitive training (MCT) and cognitive remediation (CR) at treating the persistent positive and cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia. MCT is a therapy designed to improve patient awareness and insight into the cognitive biases that are frequently seen in schizophrenia; it has been associated with decreased psychopathology (specifically decreased positive symptoms) and improved psychosocial function. CR is a therapy designed to improve performance in a variety of neurocognitive functions such as attention, memory, and executive functioning; it has been associated with improved cognitive and psychosocial functioning. Both MCT and CR will be compared to treatment as usual (TAU) as done previously (Kumar er al., 2010; Moritz et al., 2011). Hypotheses: MCT will produce greater change in delusions (severity and conviction) than CR and TAU. CR and MCT will produce greater change in social/everyday functioning than TAU. CR will produce greater improvement in basic attention and memory measures relative to MCT and TAU. MCT will produce greater reduction on tasks measuring targeted reasoning biases relative to CR and TAU. CR will increase efficiency of functional networks on a working memory task relative to MCT and TAU. MCT will lead to a greater decrease in the neural response to evidence matches relative to CR and TAU.

Primary Objective: Efficacy of Occupational Therapy (OT) based Occupational Goal Intervention (OGI) in improving executive functions in patients with refractory schizophrenia as measured by the BADS. Secondary Objectives: improvement of functional aspects,basic and instrumental activities of daily living,negative symptoms and cognitive functions improvement Hypothesis: OT is more effective than control group to improve executive functions in patients with refractory schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a heterogeneous mental disorder that affects one percent of the world's population. Current antipsychotics are only partially effective, and their use is often associated with serious side effects. Cannabidiol is a natural counterpart of the psychoactive component of marijuana, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol. While cannabidiol has no psychotomimetic or addictive properties, it indirectly affects endogenous cannabinoid signalling by impairing the degradation of the endocannabinoid anandamide. In a controlled clinical trial of cannabidiol versus amisulpride (an established antipsychotic) in acute paranoid schizophrenics the investigators showed a significant clinical improvement in all symptoms of schizophrenia compared to baseline with either treatment. But cannabidiol displayed a significantly superior side-effect profile. This study is to evaluate the efficacy and safety of this novel treatment option in comparison to placebo and olanzapine, an established second generation antipsychotic in the treatment of acute schizophrenia and schizophrenia maintenance therapy, in a four-week clinical trial.