Active clinical trials for "Thalassemia"

Patients who have iron overload due to chronic blood transfusions and have developed heart failure or who are at high risk of heart failure because of the high levels of iron in their hearts, will be treated with deferiprone, an investigational drug, in combination with deferoxamine (Desferal). Some studies suggest that deferiprone may be better than deferoxamine in removing iron from the heart and improving heart function, and that using both drugs together may remove more iron. Participants would make a clinic visit for lab studies each week, and would continue to take deferiprone for as long as their physician feels it is useful in their care.

OBJECTIVES: I. Determine the frequency and severity of osteopenia and osteoporosis in patients with thalassemia major who undergo dual energy x-ray absorptiometry, and correlate these findings with other relevant endocrinologic measurements.

The study will investigate the relation between erythrocyte glutamine/glutamate ratio and pulmonary hypertension risk in Egyptian thalassemic children in Assiut University Children Hospital

A national survey on the prevalence and natural history of endocrine complications in thalassemia transfusion--dependent patients treated with deferasirox was designed, in order to assess a larger population during a longer follow up and improve the quality of previous investigations.

Many studies done on children with thalassemia have shown a variable prevalence of defective IGF-I concentrations have been shown to be low in the majority of children, with or without GH deficiency. The Aim of this study to assess nutritional status and role of Insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) and its associating factors in children with thalassemia major

The definition of Thalassemia Intermedia is not generally accepted and the specific clinical and laboratory characteristics varies between patients. Some patients are blood transfusion dependent and others are occasionally transfused. Also the mutations in the beta globin gene are diverse. Another mutations including mutations in the alfa globin gene and in the xmn1 gene can affect the clinical course of this disease. The purpose of this study is to summarize the characteristics of patients with Thalassemia Intermedia treated at the Pediatric Hematology Unit at the HaEmek Medical Center in Israel

Iron overload impaired growth in Thalassemia patients due to iron deposition in the endocrine glands, including the hypophysis and gonads. The issue of iron overload in Sickle Cell Anemia is recently studied more extensively and preliminary studies shows that endocrine damage is rarer in those patients. Growth velocity was not systematically studied in patients with Iron Overload, even in thalassemia patients in spite several studies that assess the endocrine function in those patients. In Sickle Cell Patients this issue was not studied. The purpose of this study is to assess the growth velocity in a cohort of Thalassemia Major and Intermedia patients and compare the results to another group of Sickle Cell patients, including Sickle cell thalassemia.

Human participants affected with sickle cell disease or thalassemia will donate bone marrow for use in experimental laboratory models to study potential new treatments. This is an observational study using bone marrow from human participants. The investigators will use sickle cell and thalassemia mouse models to observe and evaluate the possibility of correcting these disorders through genetic alterations or drug treatment.

Cardiac failure is the major cause of death in patients with thalassemia and chronic blood transfusion-related iron overload. The treatment of thalassemia has been revolutionized over the past decade with the implementation of cardiac MRI based assessment of iron overload. This has enabled detection of cardiac iron overload prior to symptomatic heart failure and now allows for timely therapy which has resulted in a substantial decrease in mortality. However, currently implemented MR imaging techniques assess for iron content only and not for iron related diffuse fibrosis which play a role in iron related heart failure. Histopathologic studies indicate that patients with iron overload have diffuse interstitial fibrosis. Quantitative MR techniques have shown that patients with various cardiomyopathies demonstrate diffuse myocardial fibrosis and that these changes correlate with changes in cardiac function. The investigators propose that quantitative cardiac MRI for assessment of diffuse myocardial fibrosis can further improve our ability to detect early damage to the myocardium and prevent morbidity and mortality from cardiac iron overload. Detection of fibrosis in patients with thalassemia may allow for earlier identification of cardiomyopathy when compared to other techniques in clinical use including T2* analysis. Identification of fibrosis could affect patient management as it would allow for tailoring of iron chelation therapy and may lead to better understanding of the disease processes contributing to heart failure and arrhythmia in these patients.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether one dose of the 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV13) induces immunological memory in asplenic adults and whether previously administered immunizations with the 23-valent polysaccharide pneumococcal vaccine influence the cellular immune response to PCV13 in this group.