4 Clinical Trials for Various Conditions
The purpose of this study is to learn more about the effectiveness of palliative care training for community physicians and telemedicine support services for patients and carepartners with Parkinson's disease and Lewy Body Dementia (LBD) or related conditions and their care partners. Palliative care is a treatment approach focused on improving quality of life by relieving suffering in the areas of physical symptoms such as pain, psychiatric symptoms such as depression, psychosocial issues and spiritual needs. Telemedicine is the use of technology that allows participants to interact with a health care provider without being physically near the provider.
Diagnosing Parkinson's disease (PD) depends on the clinical history of the patient and the patient's response to specific treatments such as levodopa. Unfortunately, a definitive diagnosis of PD is still limited to post-mortem evaluation of brain tissues. Furthermore, diagnosis of idiopathic PD is even more challenging because symptoms of PD overlap with symptoms of other conditions such as essential tremor (ET) or Parkinsonian syndromes (PSs) such as progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), multiple system atrophy (MSA), corticobasal degeneration (CBD), or vascular Parkinsonism (VaP). Based on the principle that PD and PSs affect brain areas involved in eye movement control, this trial will utilize a platform that records complex eye movements and use a proprietary algorithm to characterize PSs. Preliminary data demonstrate that by monitoring oculomotor alterations, the process can assign PD-specific oculomotor patterns, which have the potential to serve as a diagnostic tool for PD. This study will evaluate capabilities of the process and its ability to differentiate PD from other PSs with statistical significance. The specific aims of this proposal are: To optimize the detection and analysis algorithms, and then to evaluate the process against neurological diagnoses of PD patients in a clinical study.
This home-based study is a randomized (1:1) placebo-controlled trial of a single infusion of zoledronic acid-5 mg (ZA) for the prevention of fractures in men and women aged 60 years and older with Parkinson's disease and parkinsonism with at least 2 years of follow-up. A total of 2650 participants will be enrolled and randomized in the United States. Participants, follow-up outcome assessors, and study investigators will be blinded to assigned study treatment. This trial is funded by the National Institute of Aging.
This is a two-center (University of Colorado, University of California San Francisco) community-based comparative effectiveness study of outpatient palliative care for Parkinson's disease (PD) and related disorders (progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), corticobasal degeneration (CBD), multiple systems atrophy (MSA), Lewy Body Dementia (LBD). In September 2018, the study was amended to also include Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related disorders (Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD), Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA), Vascular Dementia). It will utilize a randomized stepped-wedge design to compare patient and caregiver outcomes between usual care in the community versus usual care augmented by palliative training and telemedicine support to provide other resources (e.g. social work).