Active clinical trials for "Down Syndrome"

There are 26,600 Down Syndrome newborns every year in China. The economic burden of this disease is 65,000 USD for lifetime of every patient. The common prenatal screening and diagnosis procedure for fetal chromosomal abnormalities in China is maternal serum prenatal screening in second trimester followed by amniocentesis. The detection rate of MSS is 70%-75% with 5% false positive rate. There are only 13.9% of pregnant women can receive prenatal screening testing in China. It is very urgent that we build a training system and convenient, efficient, cost-effective procedure suitable to rural China. The use of dried blood spots (DBS) technology in conjunction with the second trimester prenatal screening protocol has been proved to be as efficient as serum screening by our previous study. Noninvasive prenatal testing that uses cell free fetal DNA (cff DNA) from the plasma of pregnant women offers a tremendous potential for fetal chromosomal abnormalities. A positive test should be followed by invasive prenatal diagnosis to confirm the test results. Cff DNA is a good supplement to the DBS technology in rural China. A combination of the two methods can increase the screening rate and accuracy without increasing the demand of amniocentesis and cytogenetic test. This procedure with adequate training system should be suitable to rural China. Our study will build a training system for DBS and cffDNA prenatal screening procedure in Pinggu, Beijing. Two thousand pregnant women will receive prenatal screening. DBS sample will be collected in the second trimester, Cff DNA is offered to confirm the positive screening test results, and lastly amniocentesis is offered for confirmation of the test results. All of the pregnancy and neonatal outcomes will be followed. We can estimate the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of DBS followed with cff DNA screening procedure.

The purpose of this study is to develop small molecule radio-labeled probes of beta-amyloid, to be used with positron emission tomography (PET) for early detection and treatment monitoring of Alzheimer disease (AD). The study hypothesis is that PET imaging of small molecule probes, in the form of novel fluorescent dyes with radioactive labels, will demonstrate cerebral patterns in patients with AD that are distinct from those of age-matched persons who are cognitively intact.

RATIONALE of the project. Adults with Down syndrome (DS) present severe sleep disorders that are under recognized by caregivers. Aging in DS population increases the prevalence of both Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) and Alzheimer´s disease (AD) dementia at much higher rates than in the general population. AD increases the risk of sleep disturbances and OSA, which in turn worsen cognitive performance and behavioral function. Our hypothesis is that adults with DS and AD dementia will present a higher prevalence of sleep disorders (sleep disruption, sleep circadian disorders and OSA) than in DS without dementia. There are no data evaluating nocturnal sleep in adults with DS with AD dementia. The main objective is to evaluate the prevalence of sleep disturbances in adult subjects with DS and AD dementia, by means of subjective and objectives sleep measures.

Currently, the instruments used in translational studies related to cognition have proved to be inaccurate. For this reason, the objective of this study is to evaluate whether the Bordeaux Maze Test has adequate psychometric properties and is valid for its use to compare trials tested in preclinical (animal) studies and clinical population with Down syndrome. Specifically, it is intended to study the domains of memory (relational memory) and executive functions (work memory), both relevant in the cognitive functioning of the population with Down syndrome.

The purpose of this study is to develop small molecule radio-labeled probes of beta-amyloid, to be used with positron emission tomography (PET) for early detection and treatment monitoring of Alzheimer disease (AD). The study hypothesis is that PET imaging of small molecule probes, in the form of novel fluorescent dyes with radioactive labels, will demonstrate cerebral patterns in patients with AD that are distinct from those of age-matched persons who are cognitively intact.

The aim of this cross-sectional study is to investigate the level of stress and quality of life in parents of children with developmental disabilities (Down syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, pervasive developmental disorder, cerebral palsy) and parents of children chronic diseases (diabetes mellitus type 1, epilepsy, asthma) compared to parents of healthy children. The investigators will analyze the level of stress, quality of life, self-esteem, optimism, resilience, happiness, stigmatization, depression, anxiety, sleep quality, parenting challenges and some physiological indicators of the stress such as level of cortisol and heart rate variability. Also, the investigators will measure Advanced Glycation End products (AGEs) in the skin. The investigators assume that parents of children with developmental disabilities and chronic diseases have higher level of stress and lower quality of life compared to the parents of healthy children.

This study aims to see if mobile video clips (smartphone recordings) can be used to screen children with Down syndrome to identify those at highest risk of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), so they can be prioritized for an earlier sleep study. Parents will be asked to record short video clips of their child sleeping, and then rate whether they think their child has OSA. Later, children will undergo a sleep study to compare to the ratings.

This survey arises from one objective of a PhD thesis whose purpose is to "Identify what social skills people with Down syndrome have that do a routine activity and compare them with those developed by those SD people who perform sports activities."

The overall goal of this study is to evaluate biomarkers of oxidative stress, mitochondrial function, and DNA methylation (epigenetics) in order to determine the extent to which these biomarkers are related to cognitive, behavioral and adaptive function in Down Syndrome. The inter-relationship between measurable biomarkers and functional/cognitive abilities will move beyond genetics to provide unprecedented new knowledge and a broader understanding of the underlying pathophysiology and abnormal gene expression induced by trisomy 21.

Trisomy 21 or Down syndrome, is the most common genetic cause of cognitive disability. Currently, in Alsace, the birth prevalence is about 1 in 1600 live births, which means 10 liveborns with Down syndrome each year.If screening and prenatal diagnosis of children with trisomy 21, as well as medical care, social and educational integration in childhood was the subject of much research and has led to remarkable progress in terms of health and medical care, it is not the same for the knowledge about adolescents and adults.Despite a more and more higher life expectancy, the evolution of trisomy 21 in adulthood is often marked by a deterioration in health status, with a regression of acquired psychomotor skills, often attributed only to the precocious occurrence of Alzheimer's dementia. Nevertheless, it seems that the diagnosis of Alzheimer's dementia is often overdiagnosed, and it is well established that only a fraction of Down syndrome patients will develop this type of dementia. Too often a decline in general health, behavioral changes and decreased cognitive abilities are only attributed to the Down syndrome with an early dementia without looking for an underlying, potentially curable, disease.This study aims to better evaluate the health and social status of 100 adults with trisomy 21 in Alsace. The medical evaluation will include a comprehensive assessment of health status and quality of life conducted by the geneticist, a cardiac, sensory, hormonal, biological and radiological evaluation. A speech-language and psychomotor evaluation will also be conducted. A psychiatric consultation and a psychometric assessment will aim to assess cognitive function and to search for associated mood disorders.The expected results are to better know the natural history of trisomy 21 in adulthood, with the determination of the frequency of morbid events specific to adulthood, and also to improve the medical and paramedical care with the establishment of a monitoring program to prevent the occurrence of these morbid events.