ANZCTR search results

This study examines the role of Magnesium supplementation in depression that is resistant to standard treatment. 10 participants who have a confirmed history of treatment non-response while on Medication will be recruited into this small pilot study. participants will take a 1600mg a day divided Magnesium dose in addition to standard medication treatment for a maximum of 8 weeks following a standard protocol in which participants will be subject to pre and post clinical symptom measures. this study aims to provide a preliminary investigation of the value of Magnesium supplement adjuvant treatment for resistant depression.

This project will investigate the efficacy of providing cognitive flexibility and rule abstraction therapy to six children with atypical phonology at age three, an age at whcih many children are referred to speech pathologists. It is hypothesised that therapy will lead to improvements in cognitive flexibility and rule abstraction, phonology and phonological awareness.

This intervention study will evaluate a discussion-based, patient directed group education program for the management of newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes. The potential benefits of this research for the researchers and other health professionals in the field, include an improved understanding of how best to educate type 2 diabetes patients in a group setting. Additionally, the impact of group interactions and patient-directed or patient-centred care will be assessed. The potential benefits for the participants include an improved understanding of type 2 diabetes, lifestyle improvements, and improvements in self-management behaviours. Participants will have the opportunity to ask any questions to the health professionals facilitating the groups, and to discuss any issues they have relating to their diabetes with both peers and health professionals.

The proposed research aims to investigate the effects of a self-cueing lexical retrieval therapy on seven individuals with varying language profiles, consistent with the diverse presentation of PPA. All participants will engage in an intervention designed to improve the retrieval of nouns, verbs and adjectives through the incorporation of semantic, phonological and orthographic levels of language production. Changes in accuracy of lexical retrieval of treated and control items, pre-treatment, post treatment and four weeks maintenance, will be determined for each participant. The findings will help Speech Pathologists understand the impact this type of therapy can have on the communication you need in day-to-day life. With this knowledge it is hoped that Speech Pathologists will be better equipped to help people with Primary Progressive Aphasia.

(i) Aims of the project Aged care residents with dementia present with high rates of agitated behaviour and lowered quality of life, which is associated with symptoms of depression and anxiety, and carer burden. While research has demonstrated that personalised activities and stimuli (such as favourite music and audio recordings of family members) can help in addressing these behaviours, people with marked dementia are often unable to access them without the direct assistance of family or staff carers. Our team has designed a device that provides easy access to personalised multimedia, including photographs, music, videotaped family greetings and movies on a portable device. In this project, we aim to evaluate the effectiveness of this device in reducing agitated behaviour and improving quality of life among aged care residents with dementia and also examine its feasibility for routine use. Hypotheses: (1) Participants who receive the personalised multimedia interface device will have decreased severity and frequency of agitated behaviour and improved quality of life relative to their scores during the control period. (2) Participants who receive the device will also report lower levels of depression and anxiety. (2) Aged care staff will perceive their carer role as less burdensome during the period when the resident receives the device than during the control period. In addition, our feasibility study will (i) determine what level of support from staff and families is required for participants to use the device; (ii) establish patterns of use over a one month period; and (iii) determine levels of satisfaction with this novel approach.

The overarching hypothesis is that a weight loss strategy using an intermittent fasting approach will be more efficacious than a conventional 30% calorie restricted diet approaches in the context of diabetes. The overall aim of the project is to compare the safety and metabolic effects of weight loss via an intermittent fasting protocol versus a standard daily calorie restriction protocol in overweight and obese adult subjects with type 1 and type 2 diabetes.

Prior to our research study, we need to perform a pilot study to ensure the stability of the intensity of the DOMS in our subjects over a period of 1 hour, so that any changes recorded in intensity of DOMS during the main study may not be attributed to the factor of time. These data will be used to calculate the sample size in the main study.

Repetitive TMS protocols are emerging as promising therapeutic tools for the treatment of a number of psychiatric and neurological conditions. The clinical efficacy of these protocols is likely due in part to their ability to promote lasting neuroplastic changes within the brain. rTMS and TBS are two commonly used protocols which have shown some success in transiently altering cortical excitability and treating a number of brain-related disorders. To date, however, the comparative effectiveness of these two techniques remains to be thoroughly investigated. This study will apply rTMS, TBS and sham stimulation over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in normal healthy participants. Behavioural (n-back task) and neurophysiological (TMS-EEG, EEG oscillations) data will be collected both before and after stimulation, which will provide insight into the effects that each of these stimulation protocols has on both cognitive function and underlying cortical neurophysiology. We anticipate that, compared to sham stimulation, both rTMS and TBS will significantly improve n-back task performance and induce lasting changes in brain activity as measured with combined TMS-EEG and EEG. In addition, we anticipate that these effects will be the strongest following the TBS protocol.

This trial will offer family carers of people living with mixed or vascular dementia support in their own homes using both telephone and ipad technology to deliver an intervention that combines mental health support for the family carer with information about stroke, dementia and how to manage risk factors. Currently there is little known about how best to provide support for family carers of people living with vascular or mixed dementia over the telephone or using technology such as ipads/tablets. Family carers and people living with vascular or mixed dementia in the community are at risk of social isolation, mood disorders, and carer strain. Risk factors for vascular dementia are high blood pressure, diabetes, smoking and high cholesterol so it is important to avoid and control these risk factors to maintain functioning for as long as possible. Community awareness of dementia and management of behavioural symptoms is low. Face-to-face delivery of interventions can be hard to achieve and costly. With service providers introducing ipads for community clients who choose consumer directed care, there is the potential to utilise the new technology together with telephone support to provide a multi-modal support service in the carer’s own home.

Recent work has demonstrated that non-informative visualisation of the body part (visualisation of the body part without visualisation of the stimulus) decreases our perception of pain when the stimulus is delivered to the skin. Subsequent investigations by the same group verified this finding, as well as demonstrating that the effect is greater when the body part is magnified and less when the area is minified, suggesting a relationship between body image and pain perception. This is important because there is mounting evidence of disrupted body image in people with persistent pain problems, and the degree of disruption seems to be related to the severity of the clinical condition. These results suggest that normalisation of the size of perception of the painful body part might have potential as a treatment strategy. The mechanisms underlying the perception of superficial pain produced by noxious stimulation of the skin are thought to be distinct from those mechanisms that underlie perception of pain mediated by noxious stimulation of deep tissues. Importantly, most clinical pain states are associated with noxious input from deep tissue rather than the skin. Moreover, the one study that has investigated visual distortion in a clinical population noted an effect opposite to those noted above. When patients with complex regional pain syndrome performed a task with their painful upper limb, pain was less when their arm was viewed through minifying goggles and more when magnified. While there are likely to be numerous differences in the mechanisms underpinning clinical and experimental pain, it is possible and theoretically plausible that the contrasting results were a result of the difference between superficial and the more clinically-relevant deep pain. We wish to explore this possibility by investigating the effect non-informative visualisation of the body area has on experimental deep tissue pain. Our primary hypothesis is that visualisation of the body area will have an analgesic effect on experimentally-induced deep tissue pain. We further hypothesise that visually altering the perceived size of the body part will alter the perception of pain when compared with the baseline condition of no alteration in perceived body part size. This research is important as it may provide insight into the role body image plays in influencing deep tissue pain as well as suggesting possible management strategies for pain problems.