ANZCTR search results

This study will follow a randomized, double blind, placebo-controlled, cross over design. 20 participants will complete the study, of which 15 will take part in the SST/CDB part and 5 participants will take part in the fMRI component with the RVIP and inspection time tasks. For the 15 participant group, they will attend 3 testing days and will first do baseline testing of the CDB, followed by treatment administration and post dose testing of all tasks at 30min post dose (post dose testing will consist of CDB and SST. For the fMRI group, participants will consume their allocated treatment and undergo the cognitive tasks in the fMRI scanner 30mins post dose.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether the DePuy AVN Cage is a safe and effective treatment for avascular necrosis of the hip in patients for whom the disease has not yet progressed beyond a certain stage. Each surgery will be considered a success if 2 years after surgery the disease has not progressed to the next stage and if the patient has no need for further surgery on that hip.

This randomised controlled trial will compare the effect of an 8-week mentored physical activity program called Walkabout compared with a social program for young adults with Down syndrome aged 18-35 years. Specifically, it will examine if Walkabout increases their level of physical activity.

Working memory is essential for key cognitive processes including reasoning, language comprehension and learning. Many neurological and psychiatric disorders result in working memory impairments and any technique that may enhance working memory would be very useful. For example cognitive dysfunction is a core feature of schizophrenia. The main areas affected include attention, memory and executive functioning; with working memory in particular frequently affected. These difficulties have been shown to negatively influence patients’ psychosocial functioning. Traditional treatment approaches have resulted in small gains at best. It is therefore essential that novel treatment approaches are explored. Recent research has suggested that brain stimulation, and in particular transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS), may have a role to play in improving cognition. While tDCS has been shown to improve working memory in a number of conditions, to date there have been no tDCS studies looking at the enhancement of working memory in schizophrenia. tDCS has been shown to be safe, with very few side effects. It involves the application of a very weak electrical current (1-2mA) using two surface electrodes (anode and cathode) to the head. The use of tDCS on the cortex has been shown to alter the how likely nerve cells are to fire and the effect generally has been shown to last up to 1 hour after stimulation. To date, a number of studies have examined the effect of tDCS on working memory, with some mixed results. While some studies have shown improvements in working memory during a session of tDCS (Boggio et al., 2006), other recent research has found no significant improvement (Marshall et al., 2005). A recent study has shown significantly better performance in a working memory task completed during an application of tDCS to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), a part of the brain associated with this type of thinking activity (Fregni et al., 2005). However, despite the breadth of tDCS research being undertaken, many questions remain regarding the most effective stimulation parameters, particularly with respect to optimal current strength (i.e. 1 or 2 mA). The current study aims investigate this in healthy participants and patients with schizophrenia.

The purpose of this study is to describe in better detail the airway inflammation and remodelling that we know occurs in COPD and to see what effect inhaled steroid medication has on the inflammation/structural changes and symptoms of the disease over a 6 month period.

Approximately 40,000 Australian women annually experience postnatal depression. Postnatal depression interferes with mother-infant relationships, which can influence brain development and long-term cognitive and behavioural outcomes for the child. Current best practice treatment for postnatal depression generally involves treating only maternal mood. However, treatment focusing on maternal mood alone does not improve the mother-infant relationship. Therefore, it is important to directly target mother-infant difficulties as part of the routine care of postnatally depressed women. Existing mother-infant interventions targeted at women with postnatal depression are scarce, poorly-evaluated, of long duration, and have not been adapted for Australian use. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of a brief, cost-effective 4-week early intervention program that we developed to improve the mother-infant relationship (Happiness, Understanding, Giving & Sharing "HUGS"). This intervention is added to a 9-week evaluated program we previously developed for treatment of maternal postnatal depression. Treating existing depression first increases the emotional availability needed for optimal mother-infant interaction. The HUGS intervention has shown promising results in two pilot studies. In a randomised controlled trial comparing HUGS to an attention placebo playgroup (control group), the quality of the mother-infant relationship and developmental milestones will be assessed in 100 mother-infant dyads. It is hypothesised that women undergoing the combined postnatal depression treatment and HUGS program will show greater improvement compared to the control group who receive postnatal depression treatment followed by the attention placebo playgroup in: 1. The observed quality of the mother-infant interaction; and 2. Maternal reports of parenting stress, including feelings of attachment to their infant. It is also hypothesised that infants undergoing the HUGS program will show greater improvement compared to infants in the attention placebo playgroup, in terms of: 1. Difficult infant behaviour; and 2. Early developmental milestones.

1. BACKGROUND Febuxostat is a novel xanthine oxidase inhibitor licensed in USA, Europe and Japan for treatment of gout and other hyperuricemic disorders. There has been no attempt to license it in Australia because the market is considered too small. In Australia, the only xanthine oxidase inhibitor on the market is allopurinol. Allopurinol is an analogue of xanthine, which competitively binds xanthine oxidase. Febuxostat is not a xanthine analogue and so works by a different mechanism to competitively inhibit xanthine oxidase. The cornerstone of treatment of patients with moderately severe IBD is thiopurine therapy. Thiopurines are cytotoxic and immunosuppressive therapies originally designed for treatment of acute childhood leukemias and for organ transplantation. Patients have regular monitoring of treatment response as well as blood tests (FBC = full blood count) to ensure that there is no over-immunosuppression and that there is no excessive build-up of methylated metabolites which are hepatotoxic (therapeutic drug monitoring of thiopurine metabolites). Prof Florin and others have pioneered the combination of allopurinol – thiopurine co-therapy in IBD. The advantages of this therapy are that there the thiopurine requires a considerably lower dose (about 1/3 normal dose) to achieve a beneficial treatment outcome and there are less of its toxic methylated metabolites. Currently, there is debate about why allopurinol can result in less methylated metabolites because allopurinol has no known action on methylating enzymes. Some people think that a metabolite of allopurinol inhibits the methylation enzyme but this has not been proven. Allopurinol is generally well tolerated but there are known severe adverse drug reactions including hepatitis, fever, severe skin rash, eosinophilia and renal failure which occurs especially in Asian populations. Febuxostat is a good alternative therapy to allopurinol, but its therapeutic action when combined with thiopurines is unknown. We wish to investigate whether febuxostat – thiopurine co-therapy also works for IBD patients. 2. AIM(S) OF STUDY A pilot experiment with highly motivated patients who accumulate increased methylated metabolites on thiopurine monotreatment. 3 HYPOTHESES 3.1 The combination of thiopurine – febuxostat will allow us to use less thiopurine to effect immunosuppressive and therapeutic success. 3.2 Febuxostat will cause a reduction in methylated metabolites of thiopurines.

This is a placebo-controlled, double-blind, randomized, crossover trial. Conditions will follow a 2 (placebo/glucose) X 2 (+/- secondary task) design. Participants will be required to come for 5 visits. The first visit is a practice day where participants complete screening questionnaires and familiarise themselves with the study procedures and tests. The following 4 days are scheduled at least 48 hours apart and participants are randomised to receive one of two treatment drinks (25g glucose/placebo) and +/- the secondary tracking task. They then undergo 8 blocks of testing. In each block they will be presented with 20 words in the auditory modality, via headphones connected to a computer. If they are in the secondary tracking task condition, they complete the tracking task on the computer while listening to the words. Following the word presentation, there is a word recognition task where participants are presented with the 20 original words mixed with 20 new words. Participants indicate whether or not the word was in the original list by clicking ‘yes’ or ‘no’. If they indicate yes, they are prompted to indicate whether they (1) remembered it was in the original list, (2) know it was in the original list, or (3) guessed it was in the original list. 64 channels of EEG will be recorded during whilst participants perform this recognition memory task. Levels of blood glucose, insulin and cortisol will be taken throughout the study days

Aim is to assess whether a novel cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) technique, T2 mapping, can identify myocardial edema as a marker of myocardial injury and be used as a predictor of cardiac dysfunction in patients undergoing anthracycline chemotherapy.

This study tests the short and medium term efficacy of the online Mood Mechanic Course with adults aged 18-24 with symptoms of anxiety or low mood.