Active clinical trials for "Schizophrenia"

Social cognition and interaction training (SCIT), a group-based treatment that aims to improve both processing social information and functioning, may be an effective treatment for enhancing the social skills of people with schizophrenia. This study will compare the effectiveness of Social cognition and interaction training (SCIT) versus treatment as usual (ETP) in helping people with schizophrenia improve their social cognition and social functioning so specially on negative symptoms. Many studies show a connection between negative symptom and social cognition in schizophrenia.

People with severe mental illness have an increased risk of somatic comorbidities such as metabolic syndrome, obesity, hypertension, dyslipidemia and diabetes mellitus, which induce an increased risk of early mortality, mainly because of cardiovascular diseases. These high cardio-metabolic risks result of several factors such as lack of access to medical care, a poor and unbalanced nutrition, physical inactivity and smoking but they are also exacerbated by antipsychotic medications and anti-epileptic mood stabilizers prescribed to treat their psychiatric disorder. These prevention and awareness interventions in lifestyle are most often implemented in ambulatory stabilized patients. Also weight gain occurs in the early months of treatment. The therapeutic education program evaluated in this study seeks to potentiate the effectiveness of these preventive measures through early awareness in hospitalized patients. Finally, this study aims to compare the efficacy of two early and short programs on health behavior: first a program inspired by motivational interviewing and behavioral psychotherapy and secondly an exclusively educational program (information, formative assessment).

This project aims to provide the proof of concept for transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) in the treatment of resistant/persistent Schizophrenia symptoms. The purpose is to investigate the effect of tDCS on symptoms in schizophrenic patients demonstrating a partial response to a first frequently prescribed antipsychotic medication. An early optimization of the therapeutic strategy must constitute an important factor for prognosis. Hypothesize is that tDCS should alleviate symptoms in patients depending on the clinical characteristics. In this study, stimulation is an add-on treatment to antipsychotic medication, and will be used in a broad variety of patients, i.e. in patients with varied durations of illness, various symptoms profiles, and various levels of treatment response. This in turn will allow the determination of the extent to which results can be generalized to varied patient populations, as well as the extent to which various therapeutic targets (e.g. different symptom dimensions, cognitive performance and brain connectivity) may be improved with tDCS. Despite interesting preliminary results, our team is unable to describe optimal non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) response markers. This study is a randomized, double blind, controlled, French multicenter study (11 centers). The investigators plan to include 144 patients with persistent symptoms in schizophrenia. Seventy two subjects will receive active tDCS and 72 subjects will receive sham tDCS (placebo). Hypothesize is a lasting effect of active tDCS on the schizophrenic symptoms as measured by the number of responders, defined as a decrease of at least 25% of symptoms as measured by a standardized clinical scale score (PANSS) between baseline and after the 10-session tDCS regimen. Furthermore, the participants believe that an in depth understanding of the cortical effects of tDCS could constitute an important step towards improving the technique and developing treatment response markers. An analysis of the effects on cortical activity and plasticity markers could be an interesting approach.

The ISST study investigates whether integrated social cognitive remediation and social behavioral skills therapy is more efficacious in improving functional outcome and treatment adherence than an active control treatment comprising drill-and-practice oriented neurocognitive remediation.

The objectives of this 12-week study are to evaluate the efficacy, safety, and tolerability of AVP-786 as an adjunctive treatment compared with placebo in patients with residual schizophrenia.

The purpose of this study is to find out the time it takes to absorb, distribute, breakdown and remove the drug from the body in healthy participants and subjects with schizophrenia and whether it causes any side effects.

The purpose of this study is to attempt to treat cognitive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia, with the nutritional supplement N-acetylcysteine (NAC). Schizophrenia is a chronic mental disorder that affects approximately 65 million people worldwide, and causes significant disability and suffering. Patients with schizophrenia often hear voices and have persecutory delusions. Though these are the most recognizable features of the illness, the deficits most closely linked to disability are known as cognitive deficits and negative symptoms. Cognitive abilities refer to the ability to perform mental tasks that require focus and attention, and also include memory and verbal skills. Negative symptoms refer to a lack of interest in the world, and decreased social interactions. In our study, the investigators aim to improve these symptoms and deficits by targeting the glutamate system. Glutamate is the major excitatory neurotransmitter in the brain, and its regulation is abnormal in schizophrenia: glutamate levels are too low at some receptors, and too high at others. As well, free radicals surrounding glutamate receptors also interfere with their proper function. N-acetylcystine (NAC) is a safe and widely-available dietary supplement that may restore glutamate to its correct levels in the brain, and may also help protect the brain from antioxidant damage. In our study, patients with schizophrenia will be randomly assigned to receive either NAC or placebo for 8 weeks. Brain levels of glutamate and an important antioxidant, glutathione, will be measured before and after treatment, using a neuroimaging technique known as magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Cognitive and negative symptoms will also be assessed before, during and after treatment. The investigators hypothesize that glutamate and glutathione will be normalized in patients' brains, and that their negative and cognitive symptoms will be improved, too.

Many neurological diseases, including AIDS dementia, Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia, involve an inflammatory component thought to specifically involve glial cell activation. The Investigators has been concerned with the development of tools for noninvasive imaging of inflammatory processes in psychotic disease. Here, the investigators aim to use PET-based neuroimaging with carbon-11 N,N-diethyl-2-(4-methoxyphenyl)-5,7-dimethylpyrazolo[1,5-a]pyrimidine-3-acetamide, ([11C]DPA)-713 to quantify regional distribution of translocator protein (TSPO), a putative marker of inflammation, in the brains of patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, type I. The investigators will focus on patients in the early stages of disease (within first five years of onset of schizophrenia diagnosis and within first five years of first manis, respectively) to minimize the confounds of age-, chronic illness-, and medication- effects on our results.

The etiology and pathogenesis of schizophrenia remains unclear. Immune dysfunction hypothesis for schizophrenia has attracted increasing attention of the researchers, substantial evidences suggested the levels of C-reaction protein and cytokine such as IL-1β, IL-6, TNF-α markedly elevated in patients with schizophrenia which may be particularly relevant for the cognitive impairment and metabolic disturbance of schizophrenia. In recent years, it has been demonstrated the beneficial effects of berberine on regulating lipid and glucose metabolism, reducing the proinflammatory status and improving cognition. As the investigators known, the report of berberine being used in schizophrenia is rare. This protocol is aim to evaluate berberine, as an adjunctive therapy, on inflammatory markers, lipid and glucose metabolism, cognition in patients with schizophrenia.

To evaluate the safety and tolerability of the long-term treatment with Lu AF35700.