Active clinical trials for "Sclerosis"

A disease called Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (or ALS), which leads to difficulty swallowing, breathing, and movement, has been found to be higher for those serving in the military than in the general population. There are approximately 4,200 Veterans with ALS and roughly 1,000 new cases each year. When doctors attempt to determine the degree to which an ALS patient is suffering from the disease, they apply tests that are "graded" by experts. However, this approach to testing patients may not be very accurate. Researchers aim to use a system called DESIPHER to "listen" to ALS patients and find speech mistakes related to their condition. Researchers believe that, by detecting different types of errors, DESIPHER serves as a new kind of indicator of medical problems such as difficulty breathing or swallowing, without human "grading". This may also lead to a better system for automatically understanding ALS patients' speech.

In this study, 100 persons with Multiple Sclerosis and 50 matched controls will be examined with magnetoencephalography (MEG), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and cognitive tests. The primary hypothesis for the study is: Interhemispheric connectivity, determined using graph theoretic analysis (GTA) on source-reconstructed MEG data, is a biomarker for cognitive deterioration in MS, which has value at the individual patient level.

Rates of brain atrophy for long term users of fingolimod when compared to glatiramer acetate have not been examined in patients with relapsing forms of multiple sclerosis (MS). As patients on long term therapy typically have little or no overt signs of white matter inflammatory activity (T2, gad lesions), brain atrophy measures can provide insight into whether there is continued progression of MS in these patients. What remains unknown is whether patients on a particular therapy have a slower rate of brain atrophy. This would provide convincing evidence that central nervous system tissue injury is further suppressed. Such information would be of substantial clinical benefit when deciding between various therapies. The investigators will estimate the impact of long term use of fingolimod therapy (defined as a minimum of two years on therapy) on whole brain atrophy in treated patients with relapsing forms of MS as compared to age and gender matched patients on Glatiramer Acetate. The investigators secondary goal is to determine the correlation between brain atrophy and cognitive performance in treated patients with relapsing forms of MS. The investigators will also examine the correlation between the NeuroQualityofLife (NeuroQOL) PROs, patient self-reports of disability, clinical assessment of physical disability, work productivity, clinical assessments of cognitive functioning with whole brain volume loss for patients on long term fingolimod vs. long term glatiramer acetate therapy matched on age and gender. The investigators anticipate the findings of this study will generate relevant hypotheses about these relationships.

A medical record review of historic and current information on 237 patients attending 5 tertiary referral centers [Kasr Al-Ainy Multiple Sclerosis Research Unit (KAMSU) - Cairo University Hospitals, Abo El Reesh Pediatric Hospital and 3 private centers] in Cairo, Egypt from period between 2011 and December 2015. Initially, medical records of 251 patients with the first acquired demyelinating events started before age of 18 years were reviewed. Fourteen patients (5.58%) were excluded due to missing data that could not be obtained.

Introduction: Resting energy expenditure (REE) formulas for healthy people (HP) are used to calculate REE (cREE) in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients. In ALS an increase of measured REE (mREE) in indirect calometry (IC) compared to cREE is found in 50-60%. The aims were (i) to assess accuracy of cREE assessed using eleven formulas as compared to mREE and (ii) to create if needed a specific cREE formula for ALS patients. Method: ALS patients followed in the ALS expert center of Limoges between 1996 and 2014 and with a nutritional evaluation were included. mREE assessed with IC and cREE calculated with eleven predictive formulas (Harris Benedict (HB) 1919, HB 1984, WSchofield, De Lorenzo, Johnstone, Mifflin, WHO/FAO, Owen, Fleisch, Wang and Rosenbaum) were collected at time of diagnosis. Fat free mass (FFM) and fat mass (FM) were measured with impedancemetry. A Bland and Altman analysis was carried out. The percentage of accurate prediction ± 10%of mREE, and intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) were calculated. Using a derivation sample, a new REE formula was created using multiple linear regression according to sex, age, FFM and FM. Accuracy of this formula was assessed in a validation sample.

The diagnosis and the follow-up of the patients reached of SLA is centralized, since a few years, at the the Caribbean Reference center of the rare neurological diseases (CERCA labélisé in 2006) in Martinique and at the Unity of coverage of the neuromuscular Diseases, SLA and the rare neurological diseases (create in 2010) in Guadeloupe. Several phenotypic characteristics seemed to us to take out again data collected during the follow-up of the patients (26 in Guadeloupe, since the creation of the unity) in particular patients' high proportion of exceptionally long evolution (more than 10 years). Besides, we diagnosed several cases (10 cases in Guadeloupe since 2000) of association SLA- Parkinsonien Syndrome. This association, considered as exceptional could establish a particular phenotypic entity which we would like to describe. We are interested also originally geographical of the patients, with the hypothesis that he could exist in the Antilles one or several geographical isolates of the disease allowing to lead a étiologique investigation in search of a possible genetic or environmental cause.

Multiple Sclerosis Knowledge Questionnaire (MSKQ) is a 25-item self administered questionnaire assessing a patient's level of knowledge regarding multiple sclerosis (MS). Turkish translation of the questionnaire was prepared and participants in the annual patient education seminar in the investigators' university hospital were asked to answer these questions before and after the seminar.Their results were analysed to assess their level of knowledge about their disease.

Progressive SSc is an entity with limited therapeutic alternatives and with asurvival rate of less than 45% in the first 3 to 5 years. The disease causessevere limitation in quality of life ranging from functional limitation to depression. Up to 20% of patients will be refractory to conventional treatment with diseasemodifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs) and cyclophosphamide therapy.This favors the progression to visceral involvement including gastrointestinal,lung and pulmonary hypertension. The latter being a poor prognostic factor,increases mortality in this group of patients and drastically affects their qualityof life. For this reason, different therapeutic options have been considered including cell transplantation and Stem Cell use. Among the options that have been studied so far are stromal mesenchymal cells from Wharton ́s jelly. These have been used in intravenous infusion or direct application in different disease scenarios ranging from vascular involvement to interstitial lung involvement and cases of pulmonary hypertension, with promising results in terms of clinical progression,improvement in quality of life and prognostic indices. This therapy has proven to have a significant margin of safety at the time of administration and a low rate of adverse events, a self-limiting fever as the most frequent event. Based on the above and considering the possibility of offering patients without therapeutic alternatives to their disease in addition to palliative options, an intravenous infusion of stromal mesenchymal stem cells from Wharton ́s jellyis proposed for three patients with progressive SSc refractory to conventional therapy with pulmonary involvement due to pulmonary hypertension. Under this premise the question posed in our work is; What are the effects of the infusion of allogeneic mesenchymal stromal cells from Wharton ́s jellyin patients with systemic sclerosis refractory to conventional treatment with Methotrexate or Cyclophosphamide in a population of three patients with severe pulmonary involvement due to pulmonary hypertension.

This is a multicentre observational study which involves 43 of the major Italian centres that treat MS. The duration expected for the study participation of each subject was exclusively the necessary one for the screening visit and execution of the ecocolor-Doppler test, which could have also been executed on the same day.

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between cognitive impairment and retinal nerve fiber layer & ganglion cell inner plexiform layer in MS.