9 Clinical Trials for Various Conditions
Liver transplant rejection is when the body's immune system attacks and damages the liver of a transplant recipient. Currently the best way to see if that is happening is with a liver biopsy. The purpose of this research study is to see if a simple blood test can diagnose if a transplanted liver is being rejected.
The study is planned to be conducted in 2 parts. The first part (open label, multi-center, non-controlled) of the study will estimate a dose that would provide a mycophenolic acid (MPA) exposure in pediatric participant that is comparable to that achieved in adult liver transplant participants receiving the approved dose of mycophenolate mofetil (MMF, CellCept). The second part (open-label, multi-center, single-arm Phase IV study) of the study will provide the pharmacokinetics, efficacy and safety profile of the proposed dose in the immediate post-transplant period. This study will be conducted at two centers based in the United States of America. Twelve pediatric transplant participants receiving a first liver allograft from a cadaveric or living donor will be enrolled in this study. Stable pediatric liver transplant participants who are at least 6 months post-transplant and who were already receiving stable dose of MMF in combination with cyclosporine will be enrolled into the study. Participants should have received stable MMF dose according to center practice for at least seven days in order to get steady state pharmacokinetics (PK). Participants also should have received stable concomitant doses of cyclosporine (for at least 2 days) and corticosteroids per center practice. Participants will be aged between 9 months and 12 years, with at least 6 participants greater than or equal to (\>/=) 9 months and less than (\<) 36 months, of whom at least 2 will be \<24 months.
The primary objective of this study is to assess the efficacy of immunosuppression withdrawal (ISW) in pediatric liver transplant (tx) recipients.
Antirejection medicines, also known as immunosuppressive drugs, are prescribed to organ transplant recipients to prevent their bodies from rejecting the new organ. Long-term use of these drugs places transplant recipients at higher risk of serious infections and certain types of cancer. The purpose of this study is to determine whether immunosuppressive drugs can be safely withdrawn over a minimum of 9 months from children who received liver transplants at least 4 years ago.
The specific aim is to pilot-test our developed intervention manual's ability to improve patients' adherence to medications and medical outcomes (rejection rate, liver enzyme levels) in participating centers.
The Health Advocate for Liver Transplant (HEAL-Tx) Transition of Care Pilot is a nonrandomized, open-label intervention pilot of a health advocate intervention aimed to assess feasibility and acceptability of integrating a Health Advocate onto the transplant team to help adolescents transition their care to adult transplant teams. Across studies, health advocate roles vary, and can include coordinating medical care treatment, facilitating financial assistance (e.g., taxi vouchers), and connecting patients to community resources, which can improve self-management, mitigate social risks, and lead to better communication between the healthcare system and the family. In this pilot, the investigators will adapt this intervention for adolescent/young adult liver transplant patients and measure acceptability and feasibility according to RE-AIM.
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.
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the use of a novel method to measure adherence to immunosuppressant medications in predicting rejection episodes in children who had a liver transplant.
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).