更新于：2024-11-01

The Clinical Academic Center of Braga

Portugal

更新于：2024-11-01

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项与 The Clinical Academic Center of Braga 相关的临床试验

NCT06592352 / Recruiting临床2期IIT

MODAFIMS: An Open-label, Single-center Clinical Trial to Evaluate Predictors of Response to MODAFinil in the Treatment of Cognitive Deficits in Patients With Multiple Sclerosis

This is a phase II/exploratory clinical trial with a single-center, open-label design to evaluate the effect of modafinil on cognitive deficits in adult patients with multiple sclerosis and identify predictors of response using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI).

开始日期2024-08-27

申办/合作机构

The Clinical Academic Center of Braga

NCT06611592 / Recruiting临床2期IIT

Safety and Efficacy of Pramipexole Treatment in Resistant Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD): Pilot, Randomized and Controlled Clinical Trial

The most common and effective treatment for OCD is pharmacological therapy that includes selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) antidepressants and, in the case of patients resistant to this approach, a combination with antipsychotics. Risperidone and aripiprazole are atypical antipsychotics that act on dopamine (D2) and serotonin receptors. Studies have shown that these drugs are effective in boosting SSRIs for the treatment of OCD in resistant patients.
Currently a high percentage of people diagnosed with OCD do not respond to the existing treatments. Pramipexole is a dopaminergic receptor agonist that specifically binds to dopamine D2 and D3 receptors, having demonstrated benefit in resistant depression.
The aim of this clinical trial is to explore how pramipexole can act in the treatment of OCD in resistant patients, evaluating its safety and efficacy.

开始日期2024-08-20

申办/合作机构

The Clinical Academic Center of Braga

NCT05401032 / Unknown status临床2期IIT

TryptoBPH - Proof-of-concept Study to Evaluate the Safety and Efficacy of Tryptophan in Patients With BPH.

Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) is one of the most prevalent human diseases and a major cause of lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS). Some men respond to current medical treatment (mainly α-1 adrenoreceptor antagonists and 5 α-reductase inhibitors), but a large proportion of patients continues to need a surgical procedure to treat resistant LUTS or even more serious complications of BPH, creating the emerging necessity for novel pharmacological therapies.
Oxitriptan may have a possible positive effect on BPH associated symptoms with probably no impact in sexual function (which is a common side effect of the current drugs for BPH associated symptoms). Also, improvement in symptoms could be higher than that of current drugs used for this condition.
This is a single-center parallel group, randomized clinical trial. The study will take place in Hospital de Braga (Urology department). Eligible patients will be randomized to receive tamsulosin 0.4mg (once a day, q.d.) or 5-HTP (5-hidroxitriptophan) 100mg (three times a day, t.i.d.), for 6 months.

开始日期2022-06-01

申办/合作机构

The Clinical Academic Center of Braga

100 项与 The Clinical Academic Center of Braga 相关的临床结果

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0 项与 The Clinical Academic Center of Braga 相关的专利（医药）

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项与 The Clinical Academic Center of Braga 相关的文献（医药）

2024-07-01·Journal of Psychiatric Research

Symptom provocation in obsessive-compulsive disorder: Validation of the Braga Obsessive Compulsive image set (BOCIS)

Article

作者: Morgado, Pedro ; Costa, Ana Daniela ; Silva Moreira, Pedro ; Almeida, Cláudia ; Sousa, Mafalda Machado ; Soriano-Mas, Carles

Symptom provocation paradigms are paramount to understand a heterogeneous disorder as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The main aim of our work was to develop and validate an open-access set of OCD-related images comprising three main subtypes: washing, checking, and symmetry. Twenty-six OCD patients and 25 controls provided valence and arousal ratings for a set of OCD-related, aversive, and neutral images. Linear mixed model analyses were used to estimate the main effects of group, image category, and group-image category interaction in image ratings. All main effects were found to be significant for both arousal and valence ratings, except for the group in arousal ratings. Path analysis confirmed our hypothesis that the OCI-R subscales influenced the subjective ratings of the corresponding image categories, particularly among patients. Independent samples t-tests were performed for each OCD picture to compose the set. Arousal demonstrated a greater capacity to distinguish controls and patients, thus sustaining our choice of using these ratings for the final Braga Obsessive-Compulsive Image Set (BOCIS). Our study demonstrated that the stimuli of the BOCIS reliably portray OCD-like triggers for washing, checking and symmetry subtypes. Its open-access availability will facilitate significant progress in both clinical and research settings.

2024-04-01·Psychoneuroendocrinology

Negative associations between maternal prenatal hair cortisol and child socioemotional problems

Article

作者: Tervahartiala, Katja ; Kortesluoma, Susanna ; Coimbra, Bárbara ; Sousa, Nuno ; Karlsson, Hasse ; Paavonen, E Juulia ; Carter, Alice S ; Rodrigues, Ana João ; Kataja, Eeva-Leena ; Mustonen, Paula ; Korja, Riikka ; Tuulari, Jetro J ; Karlsson, Linnea ; Perasto, Laura ; Scheinin, Noora M

Maternal prenatal distress can participate in the programming of offspring development, in which exposure to altered maternal long-term cortisol levels as measured by hair cortisol concentrations (HCC) may contribute. Yet, studies investigating whether and how maternal prenatal HCC associates with problems in child socioemotional development are scarce. Furthermore, questions remain regarding the timing and potential sex-specificity of fetal exposure to altered cortisol levels and whether there are interactions with maternal prenatal distress, such as depressive symptoms. The subjects were drawn from those FinnBrain Birth Cohort families that had maternal reports of child socioemotional problems (the Brief Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment [BITSEA] at 2 years and/or the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire [SDQ] at 5 years) as follows: HCC1 population: maternal mid-pregnancy HCC measured at gestational week 24 with 5 cm segments to depict cortisol levels from the previous five months (n = 321); and HCC2 population: end-of-pregnancy HCC measured 1-3 days after childbirth (5 cm segment; n = 121). Stepwise regression models were utilized in the main analyses and a sensitivity analysis was performed to detect potential biases. Negative associations were observed between maternal HCC2 and child BITSEA Total Problems at 2 years but not with SDQ Total difficulties at 5 years, and neither problem score was associated with HCC1. In descriptive analyses, HCC2 was negatively associated with Internalizing problems at 2 years and SDQ Emotional problems at 5 years. A negative association was observed among 5-year-old girls between maternal HCC1 and SDQ Total Difficulties and the subscales of Conduct and Hyperactivity/inattentive problems. When interactions were also considered, inverse associations between HCC2 and BITSEA Internalizing and Dysregulation Problems were observed in subjects with elevated prenatal depressive symptoms. It was somewhat surprising that only negative associations were observed between maternal HCC and child socioemotional problems. However, there are previous observations of elevated end-of-pregnancy cortisol levels associating with better developmental outcomes. The magnitudes of the observed associations were, as expected, mainly modest. Future studies with a focus on the individual changes of maternal cortisol levels throughout pregnancy as well as studies assessing both maternal and child HPA axis functioning together with child socioemotional development are indicated.

2024-04-01·Computerized Medical Imaging and Graphics

Knowledge distillation on individual vertebrae segmentation exploiting 3D U-Net

Article

作者: Moccia, Sara ; Santos, Cristina P ; Villani, Francesca Pia ; Serrador, Luís

Recent advances in medical imaging have highlighted the critical development of algorithms for individual vertebral segmentation on computed tomography (CT) scans. Essential for diagnostic accuracy and treatment planning in orthopaedics, neurosurgery and oncology, these algorithms face challenges in clinical implementation, including integration into healthcare systems. Consequently, our focus lies in exploring the application of knowledge distillation (KD) methods to train shallower networks capable of efficiently segmenting vertebrae in CT scans. This approach aims to reduce segmentation time, enhance suitability for emergency cases, and optimize computational and memory resource efficiency. Building upon prior research in the field, a two-step segmentation approach was employed. Firstly, the spine's location was determined by predicting a heatmap, indicating the probability of each voxel belonging to the spine. Subsequently, an iterative segmentation of vertebrae was performed from the top to the bottom of the CT volume over the located spine, using a memory instance to record the already segmented vertebrae. KD methods were implemented by training a teacher network with performance similar to that found in the literature, and this knowledge was distilled to a shallower network (student). Two KD methods were applied: (1) using the soft outputs of both networks and (2) matching logits. Two publicly available datasets, comprising 319 CT scans from 300 patients and a total of 611 cervical, 2387 thoracic, and 1507 lumbar vertebrae, were used. To ensure dataset balance and robustness, effective data augmentation methods were applied, including cleaning the memory instance to replicate the first vertebra segmentation. The teacher network achieved an average Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) of 88.22% and a Hausdorff distance (HD) of 7.71 mm, showcasing performance similar to other approaches in the literature. Through knowledge distillation from the teacher network, the student network's performance improved, with an average DSC increasing from 75.78% to 84.70% and an HD decreasing from 15.17 mm to 8.08 mm. Compared to other methods, our teacher network exhibited up to 99.09% fewer parameters, 90.02% faster inference time, 88.46% shorter total segmentation time, and 89.36% less associated carbon (CO₂) emission rate. Regarding our student network, it featured 75.00% fewer parameters than our teacher, resulting in a 36.15% reduction in inference time, a 33.33% decrease in total segmentation time, and a 42.96% reduction in CO₂ emissions. This study marks the first exploration of applying KD to the problem of individual vertebrae segmentation in CT, demonstrating the feasibility of achieving comparable performance to existing methods using smaller neural networks.

100 项与 The Clinical Academic Center of Braga 相关的药物交易

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100 项与 The Clinical Academic Center of Braga 相关的转化医学

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