Baltimore, MD Paid Clinical Trials

The goal of this trial is to determine whether it is possible to minimize radiation dose to parts of the brain that are important for thinking and learning in children who require radiation to treat their tumor, and if this will help reduce neurocognitive (thinking and learning) impairments in these patients. Patients with newly diagnosed brain or head and neck tumors who are having radiation therapy will have neurocognitive testing and MRI imaging (both research and for regular care) done as part of their participation in the study. Survivors of childhood brain tumors who completed radiation therapy at least two years before joining the study, and have not had a recurrence, will have neurocognitive testing and research MRIs completed. Healthy children will also be enrolled and have research MRIs done. The researchers will use the radiation plan to determine how much radiation was delivered to different parts of the brain. The investigators will use the MRIs to determine how the normal brain is changing after treatment; and how this compares to patients who had standard radiation treatment or who never had a brain tumor. The neurocognitive testing will be compared among different groups to see how different treatment plans affect performance on neurocognitive tests. Read Less

The skin and gut microbiome of rosacea patients differs from individuals without rosacea and that the microbiome suffers from unique derangements in rosacea patients following antibiotic therapy. This study was proposed to examine microbial signatures of the skin and gut microbiome in patients with moderate to severe rosacea and to identify differences between microbe communities in patients with rosacea and volunteers without rosacea using 16S ribosomal ribonucleic acid (rRNA) polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification, sequencing and computational phylogenetics and to assess alterations in the gut and skin microbiota of patients with moderate to severe rosacea in response to varying formulations of antimicrobial treatment. Read Less

This research is being done to better understand rejection in transplant recipients with HIV who receive kidneys from donors with vs without HIV. Read Less

Prostate cancer is one of most common cancers in America, affecting 1 in 6 men. External beam radiation therapy is one of the common methods to treat prostate cancer. Although radiotherapy is effective, side effects to the adjacent normal organs limit the therapeutic ratio. Those side effects are usually associated with the radiation damage of the normal tissue surrounding prostate, e.g. bladder, urethra and rectum etc. Both effectiveness and the side effects of radiation treatment are often accessed after whole course of radiotherapy, which makes the early intervention difficult. The current research project is a feasibility study of utilizing advanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques to access radiotherapy treatment response of prostate cancer during and right after radiotherapy. Many advanced MRI techniques, e.g. spectroscopy (MRS), diffusion-weighted (DWI), dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE) perfusion weighted images, have been used in radiology departments for diagnostic purpose. This research project is to study the feasibility of using advanced MRI sequences to monitor tissue response during and after radiotherapy. The tissue changes revealed from MRI can provide physicians early information on possible tumor recurrence and normal tissue toxicity, therefore, the early intervention may be possible to spare normal tissue and cure the patient. The project is designed to combine several different advanced MRI imaging techniques systematically to study tissue changes during radiotherapy, which has not been seen elsewhere to date. Another important goal of this research project is to study the feasibility of associating functional MRI with radiation treatment dose distribution. Tissue response during radiation treatment depends on dose. The functional MRI can provide more information than simple anatomic information. Mapping the functional MRI spatially and associating them with 3D dose distribution in radiation treatment planning system is one important step to quantitative assess the relationship between radiation treatment and tissue changes due to the radiation. Read Less

The Johns Hopkins Proton Therapy center is establishing a registry to capture the full 3D radiation dosimetry delivered to the patient, baseline clinical data, and disease, toxicity and quality of life outcomes. The goal is to have all patients treated at the proton center to be included in the registry to enable future comparisons of treatment outcomes to assist in understanding which patients can benefit from the use of protons. Read Less

In this study patients will be treated with 6 weeks of radiation therapy plus temozolomide chemotherapy according to the standard of care. However, the radiation treatment plan will be modified to deliver an higher than routine radiation dose to the subventricular zone which is an area of the brain that contains stem cells that some scientists believe may contribute to glioblastoma recurrence. The purpose of the study is to see if the tumor is controlled for a longer period of time in patients treated with this modified radiation technique than it is in patients treated with standard radiation therapy plus temozolomide chemotherapy. Read Less

This is a trial that evaluates the preservation of cognition and neuropsychiatric function following genu-sparing whole brain radiation in patients with brain metastases. Read Less

This will be a prospective cohort study of patients with liver disease. Subjects will undergo geriatric assessments of frailty, functional status, and disability using functional status measures at baseline and at every clinic visit in the pre-transplant setting. Subjects will also answer questions regarding quality of life, personality, and/or cognitive function. Subjects will again undergo assessments at every clinic visit through 12 months after transplant. Then, they will be followed annually. Read Less

This research is being done to see if a delivery of a single high dose of radiation therapy to a small area of the pituitary gland and pituitary stalk in a highly precise manner may be helpful in reducing intractable pain from bone metastases. Read Less

This research is being done to assess the effect of radiofrequency (RF)-based treatment on skin and skin conditions. Read Less

This project examines, in chronic pain, the mechanisms of immersive virtual reality compared to the mechanisms of placebo hypoalgesia. The potential of developing new non-pharmacological premises for low-risk interventions for pain management is high. Read Less

This research is being done to evaluate multimodality imaging, including magnetic resonance imaging-guided therapy (MRT), as a possible treatment for gynecologic cancers. The therapy takes place in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the Johns Hopkins SKCCC. The purpose of this study is to investigate the ability of MRI to successfully guide the placement of the brachytherapy applicator necessary to treat participants' gynecologic cancer. The Investigators want to see if the use of MRI will do a better job of assessing the tumor at the time of brachytherapy than the routinely used CT scan. The Investigators also want to determine if the use of MRI will enable doctors to reduce the radiation dose received by the body during the process of treating the tumor. Read Less