Down Syndrome Clinical Trials

Children with Down syndrome (DS) face life-long struggles with verbal communication. Babble and speech sound development is delayed, and speech can be difficult to understand. Words emerge late, at 21 months on average, compared to 12 months for typical peers, and vocabulary and grammar can remain limited throughout adulthood. Because DS is diagnosed at or even before birth, these difficulties are predictable; yet despite this prognostic knowledge, systematic and sustained proactive interventions have not yet been developed: Most children with DS are not assessed and treated for speech and language delays until age 2 to 4 years. This presents an untapped opportunity space to conduct a clinical trial of a proactive intervention in earliest infancy with the goal of building resilience against the anticipated difficulties. The intervention trialed here is a modified version of Babble Boot Camp (BBC), a proactive speech and language intervention originally developed for young infants with classic galactosemia (CG) (NIH 5R01HD098253). CG is a metabolic disease that, similar to DS, is diagnosed at birth and poses risks for severe speech and language delays. BBC is implemented by a speech-language pathologist who, via telehealth, trains parents to incorporate skill-building activities and routines into their daily lives at home. For the present study, 20 children with DS age birth to 12 months will be recruited and randomized into two treatment arms. One group will receive weekly individualized parent sessions and close monitoring of the child's progress. The second group will receive the same content but at a lower intensity and dosage, via monthly parent group meetings. Both groups will receive their intervention for 10 months. Specific aims are to quantify benefits for babble, speech production, and receptive and expressive language and to investigate associations between conversational dynamics in child-adult interactions and the children's speech and language. Outcomes in speech and language skills will show relative feasibility and benefits for each of these treatment modalities and motivate a larger clinical trial, with the ultimate goal of changing the way infants with DS receive support in their speech and language development, from a deficit-based, remedial model to a proactive one. Read Less

The Human Trisome Project will significantly increase the speed of Down syndrome research and the understanding of associated medical conditions. Its biobank will provide de-identified samples to research. Read Less

This study plans to establish a large bank of blood, cerebral spinal fluid (CSF), imaging, and clinical data. These data and samples will be used for future research into the causes of Alzheimer's disease (AD), Down Syndrome (DS) and other diseases that cause thinking and memory problems. This future research will also study how treatments for these diseases work. This research may help develop new treatments for some diseases of the nervous system and help understand these diseases better. Read Less

The goal of the study is to learn more about tests that can assess lung health in children with Down syndrome. Read Less

Work capacity is an important predictor of declining health or physical function, and of mortality, and is commonly measured as peak oxygen consumption. Peak oxygen consumption is very low in individuals with Down syndrome, the most prevalent genetic cause of intellectual disability. Previous research suggests individuals with Down syndrome may experience a double disadvantage when they are exercising: they may not be able to increase cardiac output sufficiently and they may not be able to allocate adequate blood flow to the working muscles. The aim of this research proposal is therefore to investigate the responses in central and peripheral blood flow regulation and cardiac autonomic function to exercise training in individuals with DS. Additionally the effects of exercise on gait, balance and attitude towards exercise in individuals with DS are investigated. Read Less