190 Clinical Trials for Various Conditions
Aim 1 of the proposed project will be to adapt the virtual Mindfulness-Based Therapy for Insomnia (MBTI) for individuals with Down syndrome (DS). The investigators will work closely with a community advisory board consisting of individuals with DS, their caregivers, and clinicians specializing in DS and sleep medicine to ensure that the intervention protocol is relevant and appropriate for young people with DS (age 12 and older). Planned adaptations include 1) utilization of visual aids and videos to increase engagement and reinforce mindfulness concepts and practices; 2) shortened meditation practices to accommodate concentration limits of individuals with DS; 3) caregiver involvement reflecting the important role of caregivers in daily functioning of individuals with DS; 4) adapted homework to cater to the learning styles of individuals with DS; 5) daily reminders to encourage regular practice and reinforce the importance of consistency; and 6) modified session structure to ensure that participants are able to discuss their experiences and refine their mindfulness practice. During the first 6 months of the project, the investigators will meet monthly with the community advisory board and use an iterative process to develop detailed intervention protocol for a virtual MBTI suitable for young people with DS. Aim 2 of the project will be to pilot test the efficacy of the virtual MBTI for young people with DS. In the second half of the one-year project, the investigators will conduct a pilot randomized clinical trial (RCT) of the intervention developed in Aim 1. This project will compare the effectiveness of Mindfulness Based Therapy for Insomnia (MBTI) and Brief Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (BBTI) for young people with Down syndrome (DS). The interventions will be compared on their impact on improving sleep problems, quality of life, and functional outcomes. This project will also test if targeting the sleep of the caregiver in addition to the individual with Down syndrome has any effect on the outcomes.
This trial protocol is designed to evaluate primarily whether the use of sargramostim (recombinant human GM-CSF), administered five days per week for four consecutive weeks (20 treatment days), will be well tolerated by and safe for use in young adult participants with Down syndrome.
To explore the effects of Partial Body Weight Support (PBWS) within an enriched play environment for infants with Down Syndrome (DS), who are not yet walking, to better understand how PWBS may impact their mobility; exploration; and overall activity level. * Hypothesis1 A: Infants will demonstrate increased movement counts on an ActiGraph during intervention compared to a control phase. Hypothesis 1B: Infants will demonstrate a higher frequency of exploratory behaviors during the intervention as compared to a control phase. * Hypothesis 2: Infants will demonstrate an increased rate of improvement in Gross Motor Function Measure scores after the intervention compared to a control phase. * Hypothesis 3: Infants will demonstrate higher parent-reported mastery motivation on the Dimensions of Mastery Questionnaire after the intervention compared to a control phase.
Progressive age-related cognitive deficits occurring in both AD and DS have been connected to the degeneration of several neuronal populations, but mechanisms are not fully elucidated. The most consistent neuronal losses throughout the progression of AD are seen in cholinergic neurons where these losses negatively affect cognition, particularly in attention, learning, and memory formation. Evidence of reduced cholinergic integrity in DS is largely limited to animal models and post-mortem human data. The investigators propose to use molecular, functional, and structural biomarkers to assess the cholinergic integrity in adults with DS. The investigators anticipate using the data gathered in this pilot study to inform future study designs to determine AD risk stratification in DS by identifying individuals who show an accelerated decline in cholinergic integrity that correlates with cognitive and neurobehavioral changes. Also, our cholinergic biomarkers may identify whether individuals with DS are likely to respond to pro-cholinergic interventions, including the novel cholinergic modulators that are being developed to enhance cholinergic-sensitive cognitive functioning. The investigators anticipate using the data gathered here to inform future treatment studies in TRC-DS and beyond where novel cholinergic treatments may offer opportunities for early intervention in DS and be complementary to disease-modifying approaches such as anti-amyloid treatments.
Children with levothyroxine (T21) have developmental delay and other functional gastrointestinal (GI) issues that may negatively affect L-T4 tolerability and absorption. For an age group unable to swallow tablets whole by mouth, tablets must be crushed and suspended in water, breast milk or formula for administration in order to treat children with hypothyroidism. For this age group, ease of administration may have a significant impact on compliance and ability to remain euthyroid. We propose that Tirosint-SOL® will be more favorably received due to ease of administration, improved tolerability and palatability, therefore leading to improved adherence when compared to L-T4 tablets.
The goal of this study is to determine whether JASPER (Joint Attention, Symbolic Play, Engagement, Regulation), which is an intensive, targeted early behavioral intervention focused on a developmentally based approach for teaching joint engagement, joint attention, and play skills can improve behavioral / emotional regulation, social communication skills, and developmental trajectories in Down syndrome (DS). The investigators will also explore the potential use of EEG and event-related potentials (ERP) as outcome measures, as this approach may help elucidate mechanisms of change in behavior and development, and may help explain differences in development of social communication skills in individuals with DS. EEG and ERP measure may also help to predict treatment outcome.
The learning of appropriate hand washing technique through repetitive watching of a video depicting an adult with DS washing his hands will be studied.
This study will explore how maternal plasma circulating cell free DNA (ccfDNA) can be used as a primary screening test for Down syndrome as part of routine clinical care in the general pregnancy population. Plasma ccfDNA testing is currently recommended only for use as a secondary screen for 'high-risk' women (i.e., women whose risk factors for trisomy make them candidates for invasive testing such as chorionic villous sampling or amniocentesis). Because most women in this 'high-risk' category are carrying unaffected fetuses, many 'unnecessary' procedures are completed in order to identify the few women whose fetuses have a chromosomal disorder. This creates expense, anxiety, and most importantly, loss of unaffected fetuses due to procedure related miscarriage. Plasma DNA testing is now being used to reduce significantly the number of women with unaffected fetuses undergoing invasive testing. Applying such testing as a 'first-line' screen has not been well-explored, despite calls from several clinical professional societies to do so. The investigators intent is to introduce, under carefully monitored conditions, ccfDNA testing through Rhode Island primary prenatal practices to the general pregnancy population. Education/orientation of prenatal care providers, their staffs, and their patients will be carefully orchestrated, and implementation issues identified and addressed. Telephone surveys of consented patients will elicit responses to their understanding of the test, their satisfaction with the process, and a comparison of their experience with serum screening in a prior pregnancy. Knowledge gained from this study will help validate new screening paradigms involving ccfDNA testing. The study is not designed to estimate Down syndrome detection rates with any confidence, but can provide information on uptake rates, failure rates, screen positive rates, and the decision-making of women with positive test results.
The purpose of this research study is to determine which measures best capture cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk and type 2 diabetes (T2DM) risk in children and adolescents with Down syndrome (DS). We hypothesize that DS is associated with worse cardiometabolic risk factors for a given body mass index compared to controls. This difference arises at least in part, from increased fat tissue.
This study will ascertain whether nicotine is safe and tolerable in DS patients, help with dose-ranging of nicotine in DS, look for evidence of enhancements in cognitive functioning, and establish evidence for biological and behavioral correlates of nicotinic stimulation effects. The knowledge gained from the translational aspects of this project may also guide the application of new nicotinic drugs in DS and generate, for the first time, data on the importance of nicotinic receptor changes in the development of cognitive impairment in DS adults. Hypotheses: * Transdermal nicotine treatment will be well tolerated out to one month by non-smoking DS patients without significant adverse effects. * Nicotine will enhance cognitive performance by one month compared to baseline and post-treatment testing. * Nicotine will enhance functioning detectable by clinician and/or informant ratings (pre-post).
The purpose of this 16-week research study is to determine whether a drug called memantine hydrochloride (memantine) has the potential to help improve memory and other cognitive abilities of young adults with Down syndrome (DS). Memantine (Namenda®) is a drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for patients with moderate to severe Alzheimer-type dementia. About 40 persons of both genders with Down syndrome aged 18-32 years will take part in this study. This is a randomized and double blind study. This means that subjects will have a 50/50 chance of being assigned to receive either the memantine pills or placebo (inactive pills). Neither the study participants nor the research personnel will know who is receiving active medication or placebo. Based on memantine's mode of action, current knowledge on brain pathology in persons with Down syndrome, and some preclinical data on mouse models of Down syndrome, we hypothesize that memantine may improve test scores of young adults with Down Syndrome on memory tests targeted at the function of the brain structure called the hippocampus. This research project has three specific aims: 1) investigate whether memantine has the potential to improve test scores on hippocampus-dependent measures in young adults with Down syndrome; 2) investigate whether memantine has the potential to improve test scores by these subjects on other cognitive measures; 3) investigate whether memantine is well tolerated by these subjects.
The study will examine the sensitivity and specificity of a circulating cell-free nucleic acid test (DNA/RNA) to identify Down syndrome between about 10 weeks and 21 weeks 6 days gestation. In addition, the new test may be used to identify trisomy 13 and 18 as part of a more complete laboratory developed test. We hypothesize that the new circulating cell-free fetal NA-based test will accurately and precisely measure specific fetal markers in maternal circulation and that measurement will lead to the ability to noninvasively identify with high sensitivity and specificity, fetal chromosome abnormalities, such as Down syndrome.
The purpose of this study is to determine whether donepezil HCl is effective and safe in improving cognitive dysfunction exhibited by children and adolescents with Down syndrome (DS). Effectiveness will be measured by rating communication, daily living skills, and social skills and relationships in subjects aged 10 to 17.
Evidence has shown poor outcome for adult patients with pre-operative pulmonary hypertension following closure of an atrial septal defect. Life-threatening pulmonary hypertensive crises may occur in these patients when they no longer have an atrial communication to decompress high right heart pressures. This concern has led some to advocate fenestrated patch closure of ASDs in patients with pulmonary hypertension with the prospect of a repeated procedure in order to close the fenestrations at a later date.
Failure to thrive and difficulty gaining weight is a sign of uncompensated congestive heart failure (CHF). Infants with Trisomy 21 and complete atrioventricular canal defects (CAVC) frequently develop uncompensated CHF and weight gain failure pre-operatively. A weight of 5 kg has been suggested as optimal for timing of CAVC repair. A delay in surgical repair often occurs if weight gain stalls and reaches a plateau prior to reaching 5 kg. A retrospective review performed by Kogon, et al, of children undergoing surgery for VSD at CHOA at Egleston recently reported that age and weight at surgery may not, however, be associated with adverse surgical outcome. The purpose of this study is to determine the optimal timing for surgical correction of CAVC in Trisomy 21 infants based on reaching a plateau of failed weight gain despite maximal anti-congestive and nutritional therapy.
Down syndrome is a chromosomal abnormality associated with significant deficits across multiple cognitive domains, including a disproportionate deficit in hippocampally-dependent memory. In other words, individuals with Down syndrome may have a particular difficulty remembering specific details from past events. One way this manifests itself is in overgeneral autobiographical memory, or a tendency to remember the general gist of an event or cluster of events, rather than a single, isolated event. This overgeneral memory makes it difficult for individuals with Down syndrome to access their past, can interfere with attempts to becoming more independent, and increases anxiety and depression. In the current VIRTUAL study, the investigators test whether a new digital memory prosthetic-HippoCamera-can enhance specific autobiographical memory in individuals with Down syndrome. In HippoCamera, users are asked to record and replay events from their daily lives. This replay is curated by a research-based algorithm in HippoCamera that optimizes consolidation of these events over time and has been shown to enhance memory specificity in other populations with memory impairments, particularly those that stem from hippocampal disfunction. It is, therefore, likely that similar enhancements in autobiographical memory specificity will be identified in individuals with Down syndrome, highlighting the benefits of this applications in this population.
The long-term study goal is to experimentally evaluate the components (and likely active ingredients) of early language interventions for young children with Down syndrome (DS). The overall objective is to determine how single-word and telegraphic simplification affects real-time language processing and word learning in young children with DS (relative to full, grammatical utterances). The proposed project will investigate three specific aims: 1) Determine how single-word and telegraphic simplification affects language processing. 2) Determine how single-word and telegraphic simplification affects word learning. 3) Evaluate child characteristics that may moderate the effects of linguistic simplification on language processing and word learning. Aim 1 will test the hypothesis that children with DS will process grammatical utterances faster and more accurately than telegraphic or single-word utterances. Aim 2 will test the hypothesis that overall, children will demonstrate better word learning in the grammatical compared to the single-word and telegraphic conditions. Aim 3 will test the hypothesis that receptive language and nonverbal cognitive abilities will be significant moderators, such that children with stronger linguistic and cognitive skills will show the greatest benefit from grammatical input but children with lower linguistic and cognitive scores will perform similarly across conditions.
This is an optional sub-study that will enroll participants from the LIFE-DSR parent protocol. Participants will undergo assessments at two timepoints, including: additional blood samples for PBMC and RNA extraction, as well as a lumbar puncture for collection of CSF, and/or MRI and tau PET imaging. Sub-study visits will be scheduled around a similar calendar-day as the parent protocol study visits (e.g., Month (M) 0 (M0) and M16, or M16 and M32).
The purpose of this Post Approval research study is to assess ongoing safety and effectiveness of the Inspire therapy in adolescents and young adults (age 13-18) with Down syndrome and severe sleep apnea. The objective of the study is to provide an ongoing safety and effectiveness assessment of the Inspire UAS System in the Pediatric Down syndrome population.
The primary purpose of this study is to evaluate the safety and tolerability of ION269 in adults with Down syndrome with evidence of brain amyloid positivity.
The investigators are assessing acceptability, appropriateness, and feasibility of an remote choreographed exercise intervention using validated scales alongside qualitative data among young adults with Down Syndrome. Participants will take part in a 12-week exercise program with two 35-minute session per week delivered in a group setting. The aims of the project are to: * Assess the feasibility of a 12 week remotely delivered group dance intervention. * Assess changes in aerobic fitness and cognitive function in response to a 12 week remotely delivered group dance intervention. * Assess the intensity and total energy expenditure of remotely delivered group dance sessions.
Children with Down syndrome (DS) face life-long struggles with verbal communication. Babble and speech sound development is delayed, and speech can be difficult to understand. Words emerge late, at 21 months on average, compared to 12 months for typical peers, and vocabulary and grammar can remain limited throughout adulthood. Because DS is diagnosed at or even before birth, these difficulties are predictable; yet despite this prognostic knowledge, systematic and sustained proactive interventions have not yet been developed: Most children with DS are not assessed and treated for speech and language delays until age 2 to 4 years. This presents an untapped opportunity space to conduct a clinical trial of a proactive intervention in earliest infancy with the goal of building resilience against the anticipated difficulties. The intervention trialed here is a modified version of Babble Boot Camp (BBC), a proactive speech and language intervention originally developed for young infants with classic galactosemia (CG) (NIH 5R01HD098253). CG is a metabolic disease that, similar to DS, is diagnosed at birth and poses risks for severe speech and language delays. BBC is implemented by a speech-language pathologist who, via telehealth, trains parents to incorporate skill-building activities and routines into their daily lives at home. For the present study, 20 children with DS age birth to 12 months will be recruited and randomized into two treatment arms. One group will receive weekly individualized parent sessions and close monitoring of the child's progress. The second group will receive the same content but at a lower intensity and dosage, via monthly parent group meetings. Both groups will receive their intervention for 10 months. Specific aims are to quantify benefits for babble, speech production, and receptive and expressive language and to investigate associations between conversational dynamics in child-adult interactions and the children's speech and language. Outcomes in speech and language skills will show relative feasibility and benefits for each of these treatment modalities and motivate a larger clinical trial, with the ultimate goal of changing the way infants with DS receive support in their speech and language development, from a deficit-based, remedial model to a proactive one.
The emergence of crawling and walking is significantly delayed in infants with Down syndrome (DS), but the development of independent mobility provides infants with new opportunities for exploring the environment and interacting with objects and people that are important foundations for early learning. Increasing infant mobility early in development with body weight supported harness systems may support infant exploration, communication, and social interaction. This project will set the stage for the first clinical trial of a mobility-related intervention specifically tailored for infants with DS by testing the feasibility of harness systems with infants and families and identifying measures that will serve as primary outcome variables. Upon completion of this pilot project, necessary preliminary data and experience required for an in-home, high-impact clinical trial for infants with DS will have been obtained.
The purpose of this study is to assess whether oxygen supplementation during sleep improves working memory and other clinical and patient-reported outcomes among children who have Down Syndrome (DS) with moderate to severe Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA).
The purpose of this study is to determine efficacy of guanfacine immediate release (GIR) for the treatment of hyperactivity/impulsivity and inattention in children 6-12 years of age with Down syndrome (DS) after 8 weeks of treatment.
This study aims to compare the rate at which oxygen uptake adapts to submaximal, moderate intensity exercise (oxygen uptake kinetics) between adults with and without Down syndrome, to determine the contribution of oxygen uptake kinetics to exercise intolerance of adults with Down syndrome. Additionally, the study will investigate the role of oxygen delivery (by the cardiovascular circuit) and oxygen utilization (in the mitochondria) on the oxygen uptake kinetics of adults with Down syndrome to identify specific areas which adults with Down syndrome could benefit from targeting during exercise training. Overall, this study aims to contribute to the knowledge on the exercise capacity of adults with Down syndrome, in order to improve the way adults with Down syndrome participate in and benefit from exercise. Participants will perform a maximal exercise test on a treadmill, and walk on a treadmill at a submaximal, moderate intensity speed and incline, during which oxygen uptake at the lungs, cardiac output, and oxygen utilization in the muscle will be measured.
The goal of this study is to determine if weight loss or changes in dietary intake can help prevent of delay adults with Down syndrome from developing Alzheimer's Disease Adults with Down syndrome without dementia will be randomized to either a weight loss group or a general health education control group. The weight loss group will be asked to follow a reduced energy diet, attend monthly education sessions delivered remotely and self-monitor diet and body weight using commercially available web-based applications. The control group will be asked to attend remotely delivered monthly education sessions on general health education topics. All participants will come to the University of Kansas Medical Center, 3 times across 12 months for a blood draw, cognitive testing, a MRI, assessment of height and weight, and assessment of diet intake.
This is an open-label study of the combination of atomoxetine and oxybutynin (ato-oxy) in children with Down syndrome and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) documented by polysomnography (PSG). Participants will receive ato-oxy for 6 months. Ato-oxy dose will be 5 mg oxybutynin and 0.5mg/kg/day (max 40 mg) atomoxetine. Dosing of the study treatment will occur approximately 30 minutes prior to bedtime. Participants who withdraw from the study will not be replaced. Study participants will undergo eligibility screening that will include an initial screening to determine whether non- PSG enrollment criteria are met, followed by a 1 night in-lab PSG and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) and cognitive assessment for participants who qualify based on non-PSG criteria. For participants who are eligible and enroll in the study, the screening PSG night will serve as the baseline measure for apnea hypopnea index (AHI) and other PSG endpoints. On the final night of dosing for ato-oxy participants will return for inpatient PSG and health-related quality of life assessment and cognitive assessment. The primary efficacy endpoint is the change in obstructive AHI from baseline.
This study attempts to learn more about the health of persons with Down syndrome after treatment for acute leukemia. Children with Down syndrome are at increased risk for side effects during treatment for acute leukemia, but it is unclear of their risk for long-term effects of cancer treatment. By learning more about the factors that may contribute to chronic health conditions and long-term effects after treatment for leukemia in persons with Down syndrome, clinical practice guidelines for survivorship care can be developed to help improve their quality-of-life.
Individuals with Down syndrome (DS) have an increased risk of numerous co-occurring conditions, including the neuropsychiatric condition known as Down Syndrome Regression Disorder (DSRD). A DSRD diagnosis often includes a sub-acute onset of catatonia, mutism, depersonalization, loss of ability to perform activities of daily living, hallucinations, delusions, and aggression and is most commonly observed in adolescents and young adults. The study evaluates the safety and efficacy of three currently prescribed therapies: lorazepam, intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) and tofacitinib.