Active clinical trials for "Schizophrenia"

Persons with schizophrenia experience imaginary voices, visions and disorganized thoughts, and are handicapped when it comes to social life, which is detrimental to the affected individuals and the community. Although the pathogenesis of this mental disease has not been clearly elucidated, much evidence suggests that inheritance is of major etiological importance and multiple genetic components are implicated. Previous linkage studies of familial schizophrenia have led to the successful identification of numerous susceptibility loci covering many of the human chromosomes, including chromosome 1q, 5q, 6p22, 6p24, 8q21, 13q32, 15q13-14 and 22q11, etc. Necessities for further identification of candidate genes involved in familial schizophrenia by taking a genome-wide approach are listed as follows: given that multiple genes are responsible for this disease, it is of critical interest to view the complete molecular profiling of schizophrenia's genome; identification of promising schizophrenia candidate genes by genome-wide scanning will facilitate the development of molecular markers and provide a more objective and effective assessment method in psychotic diagnosis and prognosis; prevention of the onset of this disorder will be improved by early classification of individuals bearing strong genetic loading for schizophrenia as a high risk population; making a breakthrough into the investigation of schizophrenia pathogenesis by the characterization of susceptible genes found by genome-wide exploring. Array-based comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) allows high-throughput genome-wide survey for DNA copy number aberrations, providing a powerful tool for investigating genetic disorders and for developing diagnostic and therapeutic targets. Arrays used in this study consist of approximately 43,000 60-mer oligonucleotide probes that span coding and noncoding regions of the whole human genome with an average spatial resolution of around 35 kb. Furthermore, the sensitivity of these arrays is capable of detecting and mapping regions of single-copy losses, homozygous deletions, and amplicons of various sizes even when using full-complexity genomic samples. In this study, the investigators will conduct an array-based comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) with genomic DNA of many affected members from "schizophrenia families" (the investigators classified families according to the presence or absence of two or more affected members) to identify a set of candidate genes associated with this disease. It is hoped that the results obtained from this study will improve the accuracy and efficiency of psychotic treatment.

The goals of this study is to determine (1) if differences in D2/3 receptor affinity states exist between medication-free subjects with SCH (MF-S) compared with healthy controls (HC), (2) the degree to which pre- and post-synaptic factors contribute to increased striatal dopamine (DA) signaling in MF-S and (3) to test the hypotheses that optimal DA transmission in the dorsal caudate (DCA) is necessary for normal working memory (WM) function.

Previous studies have shown that cardiorespiratory fitness (how well the heart and lungs are able to function during physical activity) is often reduced in people with psychosis. The goal of this research study is to test the hypothesis that aerobic exercise can lead to small changes in brain functioning that can influence visual perception and attention in psychosis. The type of aerobic exercise used in this study is called Sprint Interval Training, or "SIT". Information from this study will help to develop interventions that enhance cognition and maximize the quality of life for persons living with psychosis. The exercise procedure used is called SIT, which involves training rigorously on a stationary bike for a short period of time followed by a resting period.

Would be there any difference in dopamine synthesis between remitted clinical high risk subjects for psychosis and healthy control? What would happen to dopamine synthesis after antipsychotic discontinuation in clinical high risk subjects for psychosis? What about the dopamine synthesis in recurred clinical high risk subjects for psychosis after the discontinuation?

This is an observational, non-interventional study that will include two cohorts of patients with schizophrenia who initiated maintenance treatment during a schizophrenia-related hospitalisation or during the immediate three months after hospital discharge: patients who initiated maintenance treatment with AOM and patients who initiated maintenance treatment with any daily oral atypical AP.

Chinese version of the cognitive function test of schizophrenia (MCCB) . To explore a predictive model for long-term medication use in patients based on cognitive function

It is the goal of this study adherence and quality of life in a population of people suffering from schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and to analyze if these factors are influenced by treatment, support, social services, and residential treatment. The study population is drawn from the the cantons Glarus and Graubunden as well as Liechtenstein.

The aim of the protocol is to better understand the impairments in visual processing, as such impairments may induce social interaction difficulties in subjects with autism spectrum disorders (adults and children) and schizophrenia, like face exploration.The same protocol will be used for the three populations, each population being compared with matched controls. The explorations are designed to test two different hypotheses regarding the mechanisms of the visual perception difficulties of the two populations. Even though difficulties to extract the global form of objects have been described in both subjects with autism and schizophrenia, we will test two different hypotheses for the two populations. We will test the hypothesis that subjects with autism display an advantage for the processing of local information arising at an early level of processing, whereas disorders observed in patients with schizophrenia originate from attention disorders. The protocol includes three consecutive studies, each one being applied in each of the three populations.

Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness, which has a prodromal phase of 1-2 years prior to the onset of the illness. During the prodromal phase, patients might show maladaptation and/or poor social functioning. However, these early symptom of schizophrenia might be overlooked by patients and their families. At that period, patients might strive to improve their social interactions and social functioning. However, the efforts might further create their stress level on everyday life, which can actually accelerate the illness onset of schizophrenia. In other words, the efforts would worsen the pathophysiologic changes in the brain, which can result in the positive symptoms of schizophrenia. Previous researches found that the critical period for treatment of schizophrenia is the early phase of illness onset, especially the first two or three years. Delay treatment would worsen the illness. To this extent, early treatment would bring to a better prognosis as well as minimize the costs of individuals, families and society. In other words, early interventions not only can prevent relapse, it also can benefit patients' psychosocial adjustments. However, researches found that the average duration of untreated psychosis is 25.2 months in Taiwan, which indicates the phenomena of delay treatment and this trend might result in missing the critical treatment period. This is a two years study aiming to establish an early intervention program for patients with schizophrenia. In the first year, it aims to understand the phenomena of psychiatric care services utilization for patients with schizophrenia, special emphasis will be on the delay treatment and pluralistic health seeking process. In the second year, it aims to establish an early intervention program. The results of this research would contribute to in-service trainings, service providing, and policy making of psychiatric services.

Patients with schizophrenia have a higher risk of committing violent crimes than the general population, and the relative risk of violence against others is four times higher than the general population. Violence is a major public health problem because it often leads to poor prognosis, readmission and stigma in patients with schizophrenia. MRI studies on violent behavior in schizophrenia are relatively few. These studies have found that violence is primarily associated with dysfunction in the ventral prefrontal and temporal limbic systems. Structural MRI found that violent behavior in schizophrenia was associated with increased volume of white matter in caudate nucleus, left orbitofrontal gyrus and right orbitofrontal gyrus. However, the current research results in this field are uneven, the methods are not consistent, and there is a lack of breakthrough progress, which needs to be integrated and deepened urgently. If the violent behavior of the patients with schizophrenia could be predicted by magnetic resonance imaging, it would be a revolutionary try. By doing so, the investigators can strengthen the treatment of these patients and reduce the occurrence of violence. Based on previous studies, the investigators believe that violent schizophrenics exhibit recognizable imaging characteristics under structural phase, resting state, negative emotional images and natural stimuli models. Anomalies in a particular mode may be subtle and difficult to identify, but when multiple different modes are integrated, a significant and characteristic set of imaging markers will be present. This study will use the multivariate model of machine learning method, detection brain activation patterns under different situations among patients with violence. The investigators are going to study imaging biomarkers, and try to predict the possibility of onset of violence among schizophrenia patients, thus reduce the risks of violence.