Active clinical trials for "Schizophrenia"

Weight gain is a serious, common side effect of many antipsychotic medications. On average, the highest amounts of weight gain are found to occur in people taking clozaril and olanzapine, but with significant weight gain occuring in those on the other atypical antipsychotics as well. We, the researchers at the University of North Carolina, propose an open-label observational, pilot study of the changes in weight, BMI, body composition, and lipids, glucose, insulin and other metabolic parameters occurring in subjects as they switch from treatment with olanzapine, risperidone or quetiapine to aripiprazole. This medication switch will be determined prior to their entering this study by their treating psychiatrist. We also will determine resting energy expenditure (REE) and respiratory quotient (RQ) as measured by metabolic cart to determine if either energy expenditure or the propensity to store energy as fat may be involved in any changes to weight that are detected. Food intake, hunger, and physical activity will also be assessed.

The purpose of this study is to determine if Risperdal Consta will affect the healthcare utilization costs in chronically ill schizophrenic patients with multiple admissions to the psychiatric hospital compared to the previous utilization costs under standard oral treatment of any atypical antipsychotic. We hypothesize that higher Risperdal Consta acquisition costs can be offset by reduction in total medical utilization costs, such as hospitalizations, ER visits, unscheduled outpatient visits or incarcerations due to worsening of psychotic symptoms.

This study will evaluate the differences in smoking behavior, nicotine intake, and nicotine boost among people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or no mental illness.

Recruitment of patients with schizophrenia to clinical trials is difficult and in an ongoing project different methods of recruitment have been used in order to recruit. One of the methods used have been sending potential participant to the study an invitation letter with information of the study and an invitation to make contact with a project nurse. Not many patients have replied. The aim of this study is to examine whether a simplified version of the invitation Letter, in terms of information structure and written style will encourage more patients to make contact to a project nurse.

Digital medicine systems (DMS) have been designed to assist individuals with the management of their daily health, wellness, and medication use. The DMS is being developed as a healthcare management tool to precisely measure medication adherence and to potentially enhance adherence.

Neurophysilogical, neuropsychological evaluation and cognitive and physical training

This study aims to screen and validate multi-scale bio-markers for early diagnosis and medication monitoring for early schizophrenia, including the genetic, neurobiochemistry, neuroimaging and eletrophysiological measures. Based on the validated bio-markers, the present study further tries to build several prediction models for early differential diagnosis of schizophrenia from healthy controls and other mental diseases (such as the major depression and anxiety disorders), biological sub-typing and diagnosis of the schizophrenia sub-types, and early prediction of the medication effects.

This application seeks to determine if neurophysiological metrics of memantine (MEM)-enhanced early auditory information processing (EAIP) in schizophrenia (SZ) mediate gains in auditory processing fidelity (APF) and auditory learning.

This study investigates whether Introspective Accuracy (IA) can be improved in individuals with schizophrenia by stimulating the brain via transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS).

Objective: Hyperprolactinemia(HPRL) which can result in a series of prolactin-related symptoms is a frequent adverse effect of antipsychotics. The investigators are interested to explicate the characteristics of serum prolactin level change after taking different antipsychotics and related factors. Method: Review of electronic medical records of schizophrenia patients who were brought to Shanghai Mental Health Center since January 1, 2007. The investigators collect their information, and then set serum prolactin level after first 1-month antipsychotic treatment as primary outcome. Secondary outcomes are prolactin levels tested at other time points. Variables will range from antipsychotic kinds, dosage, treatment duration and blood concentration to demographic information, to disease history, to clinical treatment on hyperprolactinemia, to laboratory test results, such as blood routine examination, biochemistry, sex hormone levels and so on. After data cleaning and management, we will apply logistic regression, cox regression, Receiver Operating Characteristic curve (ROC) and machine learning to analyze factors of prolactin level; establish a model of prolactin change with time; propose optimal monitoring time of prolactin according to prolactin change with time; analyze correlation among antipsychotics, prolactin and clinical characters, for the purpose to supply objective evidence for antipsychotic treatment.