Aging Clinical Trials

The effect of L-Citrulline is well studied in relation to muscle strength, exhaustion, exercise performance, and endothelial function in health and disease. This study will extend current body of knowledge and will investigate the effect of L-Citrulline on brain vascular function. Read Less

Supervised exercise therapy (SET), consisting of treadmill exercise conducted three times weekly at a center while supervised by healthcare personnel, is first line therapy for people disabled by lower extremity peripheral artery disease (PAD). However, travelling three times/week to a center for SET is burdensome. Compared to SET, home-based exercise is more accessible and less burdensome. Yet, evidence-based guidelines recommend SET over home-based exercise for PAD. Walking exercise is first line therapy to improve walking distance for PAD, but it does not eliminate ischemic leg symptoms in most people with PAD. The investigators' work and that of others showed that nitrate-rich beetroot juice, which increases plasma nitrite, limb perfusion, and skeletal muscle function, significantly improved exercise tolerance and reduced non-response to exercise in people with and without PAD. The investigators will use a 2 x 2 factorial design to address two major barriers to achieving benefits from exercise therapy for PAD: First, guideline recommendations for supervised exercise therapy (SET) as first line therapy for PAD. Second, the inability of exercise therapy to eliminate PAD-related disability in most people with PAD. Participants will be randomized to one of four groups for 12 weeks: Supervised treadmill exercise + nitrate rich beetroot juice; supervised treadmill exercise + placebo, home-based walking exercise + nitrate rich beetroot juice, home-based walking exercise + placebo. Read Less

The ENLIGHTEN PAD Trial will collect preliminary data to test whether daily 660 nm light treatment of the lower extremities immediately before home-based walking exercise sessions improves six-minute walk distance at 4-month follow-up, compared to sham light, in people with lower extremity peripheral artery disease (PAD). Read Less

The goal of this clinical trial is to see how small blood vessels respond to the stress of high intensity exercise, and if a safe and simple intervention called ischemic conditioning can protect blood vessels from the stress of exercise. Participants will come in for 3 study visits and get home-based ischemic conditioning. At Study Visit 1, participants will be assessed for their frailty and physical function. Afterwards, they will perform an exercise test. At Study Visit 2, patients will undergo 2 microvascular assessments, perform a high-intensity exercise, then undergo the same 2 microvascular assessments again. Participants will be given a handheld sphygmomanometer and a blood pressure cuff to take home. Depending on which group the participants get randomized into, participants will place the blood pressure cuff around their non-dominant upper arm and inflate to either a low or high pressure for 2 weeks at home. Participants will repeat the same steps in Study Visit 2 for Study Visit 3. In addition, participants will also be assessed for their frailty and physical function. Read Less

The present study will evaluate the effects of both aging and nicotine on psychophysical tasks and electrophysiological measures. Nicotine will be administered to study participants in the form of gum that is available as an over-the-counter medication. The hypothesis is that nicotine will reverse the detrimental effects of aging on auditory processing. The proposed experiments will characterize the effects of nicotine and may eventually lead to improved treatments of hearing loss in a variety of patient populations and in healthy aging. Read Less

The purpose of this study is to use an experimental inflammatory challenge to examine whether older adults with symptoms of anxiety experience loss of pleasure or loss of motivation when they are exposed to inflammation. Loss of pleasure or loss of motivation will be evaluated using self-report questionnaires, computer tasks, and during a brain scan. Read Less

To prospectively determine the burden of hypoglycemia (minutes spent below 70 mg/dl per day, measured by continuous glucose monitor (CGM)) among residents of long term care facilities (LTC) with a diagnosis of type 1 or type 2 diabetes including key clinical subgroups (living in skilled nursing facility (SNF) or nursing home (NH), on different hypoglycemic medications). This aim will be achieved by recruiting 300 residents with diabetes in 4 LTC facilities. All participants will undergo masked CGM for 10 days. Read Less

The purpose of this study is to investigate brain activity during current visual and auditory tasks for balance control. The participants will perform cognitive, gait, and balance measures before the data collection to exclude people with neurological disorders. The participants will wear VR headset which provides visual tasks. The participants will need to maintain balance while performing concurrent visual and auditory tasks. The brain activities, reaction time, and eye-tracking data will be collected during doing our experimental tasks. Read Less

In a randomized controlled trial, to study the utility of inspiratory muscle training (IMT) to improve functional outcomes in adults aged ≥70 years with heart failure (HF) who have been referred to palliative care for end-stage HF management. * The study team hypothesize that older HF patients will be able to use IMT safely, reliably, and effectively in a 12-week home-based training regimen. * The study team hypothesize that physical function (sit to stand, gait speed, grip strength), respiratory/pulmonary function, self-efficacy, fatigue and quality of life will increase among older HF patients randomized IMT versus those randomized to usual care. Read Less

The proposed study seeks to evaluate effectiveness, implementation processes, and cost of MOTIVATE among older Veterans with chronic musculoskeletal (MSK) pain and comorbid depressive symptoms. Read Less

The goal of this clinical trial is to test the effects of different types of exercise on brain health and Alzheimer's risk in older African Americans. Specifically, the main question\[s\] it aims to answer are: * What is the effect of a Cardio-Dance Fitness (CDF) vs. a Strength, Flexibility, and Balance (SFB) intervention on a cognitive marker of Alzheimer's risk, generalization? * What is the effect of the CDF vs. SFB intervention on a fMRI biomarker of Alzheimer's, neural flexibility, and do improvements in neural flexibility mediate improvements in generalization? * Do ABCA7 genotypic variations moderate the efficacy of the CDF vs. SFB intervention for reducing Alzheimer's risk? Participants will undergo-- at baseline and post-test-- health assessments, cognitive tests, and structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and a blood-draw to assess Alzheimer's risk biomarker levels. Read Less

Women are at increased risk for Alzheimer's disease (AD). Notably at menopause, some women experience a change in cognition. However, not all women experience negative effects of menopause on cognition. The cognitive changes that occur at menopause have not yet been connected to late life risk for pathological aging including AD. Thus, understanding the neurobiological factors related to individual differences in cognition at menopause is critical for understanding normal cognitive aging and for determining risk for pathological aging. The challenge in understanding the role of estrogen loss on the risk for AD is the long lag time between the hormonal changes at menopause and the clinical manifestations of AD. Thus, identifying how the hormone changes after menopause are related to AD risk will alter the risk calculus for postmenopausal women in the future. The novel study proposed here will examine an established AD-related neurotransmitter-based mechanism that may also underlie cognitive changes after menopause. The investigators propose that the change in the hormonal milieu at menopause interacts with the cholinergic system and other brain pathologies to influence a woman's risk for cognitive decline. Preclinical studies have shown that estrogen is necessary for normal cholinergic functioning and its withdrawal leads to cholinergic dysfunction and cognitive impairment. It is important to determine whether menopause-related cognitive changes correlate with both cholinergic functional integrity and established AD biomarkers that portend increased risk for late-life cognitive impairment or dementia. This study will examine brain functioning following cholinergic blockade to separate individuals into those who are able to compensate for the hormone change after menopause and those who are not. The investigators hypothesize women with poor compensation have increased sensitivity to cholinergic blockade by showing poor performance on a cognitive task, altered brain activation, and decreased basal forebrain cholinergic system (BFCS) volume. These cholinergic markers will be related to menopausal factors associated with poor cognition and biomarkers of AD. Specific Aim 1 is to examine cholinergic functional "integrity" by measuring working memory performance, functional brain activation, and BFCS structure in postmenopausal women. Specific Aim 2 will examine whether individual differences in menopause-relevant symptoms and known AD biomarkers are related to cognition and brain activation after anticholinergic challenge. The public health significance of this study is that it will identify individual difference factors that are associated with cognitive performance changes after menopause and their relationship to structural, functional, and biomarker evidence of risk for later life cognitive dysfunction. Knowledge of these factors will serve to advance personalized future risk-mitigation strategies for women including hormonal, medication, cognitive remediation, etc. that will be the subject of further research. Read Less