11 Clinical Trials for Various Conditions
The TEAMMATE Trial will enroll 210 pediatric heart transplant patients from 25 centers at 6 months post-transplant and follow each patient for 2.5 years. Half of the participants will receive everolimus and low-dose tacrolimus and the other half will receive tacrolimus and mycophenolate mofetil. The trial will determine which treatment is better at reducing the cumulative risk of coronary artery vasculopathy, chronic kidney disease and biopsy proven-acute cellular rejection without an increase in graft loss due to all causes (e.g. infection, PTLD, antibody mediated rejection).
This open label study will assess the pharmacokinetics and the safety and tolerability of Valcyte (valganciclovir) powder for oral solution in neonatal and infant heart transplant patients \< 4 months of age.
The restoration of normal blood flow following a period of ischemia may result in ischemia / reperfusion injury (I/RI), which is characterized by inflammation and oxidative damage to tissues. Varying degrees of I/RI occur upon reperfusion of a donor heart after cold storage. Medications containing antibodies against immune cells have been used for many years as powerful immunosuppressants. These medications, called polyclonal antibody preparations, are generally only used immediately following transplantation and/or to treat rejection. At our institution, one such antibody preparation (Thymoglobulin) is used in most pediatric heart transplant recipients for 3-5 days immediately after transplantation. Because standard immunosuppressive medications (called calcineurin inhibitors) are toxic to the kidneys, the use of Thymoglobulin allows us to delay the initiation of calcineurin inhibitors until the kidneys of completely recovered from the shock of the transplant surgery. We hypothesize that Thymoglobulin may be beneficial in reducing the damage caused by I/RI. Thus, the present study seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of an intra-operative dose of Thymoglobulin (in addition to the standard doses post-operatively) at reducing the effects of I/RI. The study will be a double-bind placebo-controlled trial involving 20 subjects. Biologic markers for I/RI will be assessed at periodic intervals for six months post-transplantation. Subjects receiving intra-operative doses of Thymoglobulin will be compared to the controls in order to assess the effectiveness of intra-operative Thymoglobulin in ameliorating the effects of I/RI.
The survival of children who have received heart transplants has greatly improved over the last ten years. One reason for this is better control over rejection. Rejection medications require a delicate balance of enough medicine to work without causing side effects. It is a goal to avoid both rejection and side effects from the anti-rejection medicines. Usually several medicines are used together to prevent rejection. One of these medicines is often Mycophenolic Acid or CellceptThis medicine has been used longer for adults than is has for children. More information is needed on using it for children. The dose is usually determined by the patient's weight or body surface area. There have been some early studies of the use of Cellcept, but none have proven a relationship between the blood level of the drug and how well it works. More also needs to be known about how this drug works with other anti-rejection drugs and how it works in boys and girls. This study will look more closely at proper dosing, how Cellcept works with other anti-rejection medications, side effects, and any differences in how this medicine works in boys and girls. All patients in the study will be receiving Cellcept and have blood levels of the drug drawn. Results of their usual treatment and testing will be recorded and evaluated for signs of rejection. All the information will be analyzed. Results of this study will be reported to transplant committees locally and nationally.
The purpose of this study is to collect and compare information on how and when adolescent heart transplant recipients take their prescribed medication. The investigators want to find out if regular use of 'an app' on cell phones, called the Teen Pocket PATH® (TPP), can help adolescents take their medication according to their prescribed dosing schedule. This may then help reduce complications of transplant, such as rejection. The investigators also want to find out if how adolescent heart transplant recipients take their medications affects the development of antibodies in their blood. Antibodies are small proteins in the blood that may develop after heart transplantation, and which can sometimes damage a new heart.
This is a multi-center, prospective, single cohort, observational study of pediatric heart transplant recipients designed to determine the impact of preformed versus de novo human leukocyte antigen (HLA) donor-specific antibodies (DSA), and antibodies to the self-antigens cardiac myosin and vimentin, on chronic allograft function. In addition, the investigators will explore mechanisms of action and predictors of DSA, rejection and altered pathophysiology.
The purpose of this study is to determine the clinical outcomes of sensitized pediatric heart transplant recipients with a positive donor-specific cytotoxicity crossmatch and to compare this group with outcomes in nonsensitized heart transplant recipients.
We will conduct a two-group randomized controlled trial to examine the eMocha DOT intervention with pediatric HT recipients.In this population, medication nonadherence remains a primary cause of late acute rejection (LAR) episodes, increased number of hospitalizations, graft failure, and patient mortality. Herein, we propose an innovative approach to promote medication adherence and improve patient and graft outcomes.
The purpose of this pilot trial, Transitioning to Adult Care (TRANSIT), is to develop and test an intervention (i.e., a standardized, tailored transition program focused on enhancing adherence) to improve outcomes for emerging adults who underwent heart transplantation as children and transfer to adult care.
Adherence to medical regimens refers to what degree a patient chooses to follow the advice given by his/her healthcare provider. Good adherence typically involves behaviors such as the patient taking medication as directed and going to scheduled clinic appointments. As many patients often do not follow the advice of doctors as closely as suggested, many researchers have tried to find out the reasons behind patients being "non-adherent." This research has looked at medical conditions such as diabetes, cystic fibrosis, and asthma. More recently, researchers have started to look at adherence with children who have undergone solid organ transplantation. This is because about 50% of these children are to some degree non-adherent with their medical regimen. This comes at a costly price as ongoing non-adherence in pediatric transplant can lead to the child's body rejecting the new organ and even death. This study has been designed to look at the reasons that pediatric patients may choose to be non-adherent. This study will look at issues related to the patient (e.g., age, family support), related to the disease and regimen (e.g., length of illness, how complicated the regimen is), related to the medication (e.g., taste, side effects), related to their mind (e.g., memory problems, confusion), and related to their emotions (e.g., being depressed, anxious). The investigators will be looking at each regimen-related behavior, such as attending clinic appointments and will be asking each family about any barriers that make it difficult. The investigators hope that knowing these barriers will help them make interventions that fit the specific issues that each patient faces. Ultimately, doctors, transplant coordinators, and psychological professionals will be able to use this information to intervene early with families who report barriers that impact adherence.
CMV infection and disease remain a significant clinical challenge for pediatric solid organ transplant (SOT) recipients. Current prevention strategies are limited to prophylaxis in which antiviral medication is administered for a period of several months or preemption in which close monitoring of CMV viral load from the peripheral blood is performed and treatment is initiated when CMV is detected. Each of these strategies has risks, costs, and limitations associated with it. Recently, assays for measurement of an individual patient's CMV immunity have been developed and are clinically available. One of these is the Viracor CMV T cell Immunity Panel. This flow cytometry based assay is performed on peripheral blood and measures cytokine release in response to CMV antigen stimulation by flow cytometry. The thresholds for this assay that confer protection against CMV infection in pediatric SOT recipients are not known. Defining CMV-specific cell mediated immune response thresholds that confer protection against CMV reactivation could inform patient specific durations of antiviral prophylaxis or pre-emptive surveillance testing. Therefore, the objective of this study is to quantify CMVresponsive T lymphocyte populations by flow cytometry (Viracor CMV T cell Immunity Panel) in pediatric heart, kidney, and liver transplant recipients within the first year of transplantation and to investigate potential threshold values that correlate with protection against CMV infection (DNAemia).