Active clinical trials for "Schizophrenia"

The treatment of schizophrenia is challenging as the existing medications improve only the positive symptoms with the limited benefit on cognitive and negative symptoms which have a large bearing on the functional outcome. Recent research has suggested the association of low level of vitamin D with schizophrenia but studies are few and marred by mixed results. Thus, we propose to evaluate the effect of weekly vitamin D3 supplementation in patients with first-episode schizophrenia through a randomised doubled blind placebo controlled design.Fifty-six participants of either sex (19 - 50 years) with schizophrenia having vitamin D insufficiency/deficiency (< 30 ng/ml) will be randomly supplemented with Vitamin D3 or placebo for 8 weeks in 1:1 pattern. The clinical treatment i.e., antipsychotic medications will be continued as usual within the two groups. Participants in both the groups will be assessed at study entry, at the end of the 04 and 08 weeks (after completing supplementation) on the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), Computerized Neurocognitive Battery (CNB) & Clinical Global Improvement (CGI) subscale (CGI-I). Raters will be blind to the group assigned to participants. Side effects will be monitored at every visit. The serum levels of vitamin D will be measured at baseline and at the end of 08 weeks.

Patients with schizophrenia suffer from autobiographical memory disorders. Patients have difficulty to remember vividly personal past events when they are specifically asked for. Indeed, this task requires a good executive functioning to retrieve precise information stored in long term memory. Interestingly, executive functioning has been showed impaired in schizophrenia and studies showed that their autobiographical memory impairments were directed related to their executive dysfunction. Yet, in daily life people remember more often autobiographical memories spontaneously, without trying voluntarily to recall them. In that case, the involuntary recall of personal past events is much less sustained by executive functioning. In this protocol the investigators would like to investigate and compare subjective characteristics of involuntary and voluntary autobiographical memories in order to highlight the role of executive dysfunction in patients' autobiographical memory impairments.

The title of this study is a multi-center,non randomized,open-labeled,intervention study:the efficacy and safety of intramuscular ziprasidone for three days in patients with acute psychotic agitation. The primary objectiveis to evaluate the efficacy of intramuscular ziprasidone in patients with acute psychotic agitation in daily clinical practice. The secondary objectives are:1.To evaluate the safety of intramuscular ziprasidone in patients with acute psychotic agitation in daily clinical practice.2.To compare the efficacy and tolerance of intramuscular ziprasidone in patients with agitation in the different psychotic disorder 3.To compare the efficacy and tolerance of intramuscular ziprasidone in patients with first episode andmulti-episode patients. 4.To explore the measured based administration according to severity of symptoms.5.To compare the efficacy and tolerance of ziprasidone im between the monotherapy and combination with other antipsychotic drug in clinical practice. The Rationale:In China, the studies of ziprasidone im treating agitation focus on schizophrenia. But in the foreign country, ziprasidone im also is approved to treat psychotic agitation, including bipolar and schizoaffective disorder. And in the clinical practice of China, ziprasidone im is also used to treat other patients, although the evidence is less. In this study, we assume ziprasidone im treat the psychotic agitation is effective and safe. Study populations:The study plan to enroll 1000 subjects in China. （6）The background and the hypothesis：The researches of ziprasidone mesylate injection in our country are more concentrated in schizophrenia at present, while in foreign countries ziprasidone is approved for psychotic agitation, including mania etc. It's also used for substance abuse and alcohol induced agitation.Therefore, this study assumes that ziprasidone mesylate injection is effective in the treatment of acute agitation, and it's well tolerated.

The study is the first pilot randomised controlled trial (RCT) to explore the feasibility and efficacy of Mindfulness-based psychoeducation in emotion regulation and related depressive and anxiety symptoms in people with schizophrenia.

Background: Negative symptoms are typically observed in people with schizophrenia and indicate a loss or reduction of a normal function (e.g. reduced motivation and affect display). Despite being important predictors of people's recovery the development of interventions for negative symptoms received only very limited attention. There are currently no evidenced based therapies for these symptoms. Aims: To test the feasibility and acceptability of a novel virtual reality assisted therapy, called Virtual Reality Supported Therapy for the Negative Symptoms of Psychosis (V-NeST). Methods: This is a single (rater) blind randomised study with two conditions; V-NeST plus treatment-as-usual (TAU) vs. TAU alone. The study will recruit people with psychosis from NHS community care teams (in England). Assessments will be at baseline and 3-month post-randomisation. A nested qualitative study to identify the key themes associated with the acceptability of the overall study and intervention will be conducted. The study will assess key feasibility parameters such as: consent and availability for screening; eligibility; availability for assessment, randomisation and treatment retention. Acceptability will be assessed by considering: therapy session attendance and drop-out; in-depth feedback from service users interviews; acceptability of the research procedures and measures. Participants will be assessed with measures of functioning levels and, negative symptoms . Analyses will evaluate the feasibility and analyses of clinical outcomes will be focused on descriptive statistics and confidence intervals for treatment effects. Population variances of the main outcomes will be estimated for future power calculations. A semi-structured interview will explore participants' experience of being recruited to the study, receiving V-NeST and identify barriers (and potential solutions) to treatment engagement.

The project intends to take treatment-resistant schizophrenia as the research object and uses sequential multiple assignment randomized trial(SMART) design to define the treatment recommendations of different drug regimen for treatment resistant schizophrenia and to determine the physical enhancement regimen for clozapine-resistant schizophrenia and to explore targeted regulation scheme for ultra-resistant schizophrenia.

Negative symptoms are one of the five-dimensional symptoms of patients with schizophrenia, and medications are not effective in treating negative symptoms. The mechanism of negative symptoms of schizophrenia is unknown, which may be related to insufficient dopamine function of the prefrontal cortex. Amisulpride is a D2/D3 receptor antagonist, which can improve negative symptoms. Intestinal microbes are related to central nervous system mental diseases. Animal studies have found that changes in the intestinal microflora are related to schizophrenia. Clinical studies have found that the gut microbes of patients with schizophrenia are different from those of normal healthy people. Therefore, we are trying to discover the changes of gut microbes in patients with effective amisulpride treatment, and to improve the negative symptoms of schizophrenia patients through the intestinal immune system. The mechanism of brain relationship provides direction, and also provides a new way for the drug treatment of negative symptoms.

This study is a randomised and controlled trial that aims to investigate whether Cognitive Remediation Therapy (CRT) can modulate epigenetic mechanisms by changing methylation levels of BDNF gene in patients with Schizophrenia.

Introduction: Numerous studies support the practice of different physical exercise modalities as an effective treatment to address the different problems associated with schizophrenia, reporting that they result in significant improvements in patient symptoms and quality of life. Given the lack of studies comparing different types of training in controlled environments, the aim of this proposed study will be to compare the effects of three physical exercise programs (strength, aerobic, and mixed) on the symptoms, body composition, level of physical activity, and health-related quality of life of patients with schizophrenia. Ethics and dissemination: This study was approved by the ethics committees for Biomedical Research at the CEU Cardenal Herrera University of Valencia in Spain (reference number: CEI18/215). Participants will be fully informed of the purpose and procedures of the study, and written informed consent will be obtained from every participant. The results from this study will be published in peer-reviewed journals and presented in scientific conferences.

As an ancient, popular Chinese exercise, Baduanjin is characterized by symmetrical posture, deep breathing and meditation and easy to learn. Previous studies showed immediate effect of Baduanjin on cognition in patients with schizophrenia.The purpose of this study is to investigate the immediate effect and chronic effect of Baduanjin exercise on physical fitness, cognition and daily functions in middle-aged and older adults with schizophrenia.