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45 active trials for Healthy Volunteer

Normal Values in Hearing and Balance Testing

Background: - Researchers at the National Institutes of Health give many tests of hearing and balance. These tests can help detect problems that affect hearing or balance. It is important to know exactly how healthy people perform on each of these tests. This information will indicate when a test result is normal and when a test result shows a problem. Researchers also want to determine the best methods for each test. Objectives: - To test different types of hearing and balance tests, and collect information on normal values for each test. Eligibility: - Healthy volunteers between 5 and 70 years of age. Design: This study will require a single visit to the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center. It will include both screening tests and study tests of hearing and balance. Sometimes, a second visit may be required if a test is designed to measure the same thing on 2 different days. Each visit will last between 2 and 5 hours, depending on the number of tests scheduled per visit. Participants will have a physical exam and medical history. They will also have basic tests to check for normal hearing and balance. Participants may have different hearing tests, including the following: Auditory Evoked Potentials to study how the ears and brain handle sound information. Auditory Processing Tests to study how a person processes complex sounds like speech in background noise. Tests of middle ear and inner ear function. Participants may have different balance and inner ear tests, including the following: Balance test on a tilting platform. Different tests to measure how well the eyes, ears, and brain work together to help maintain balance. Treatment will not be needed as part of this study.

Start: September 2012
Safety and Immunogenicity of Ad4-HIV Envelope Vaccine Vectors in Healthy Volunteers

Background: Researchers want see if three new HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) vaccines are safe. Two vaccines are carried by live adenoviruses, which are natural and typically cause cold symptoms or an eye infection. Researchers want to see if all the vaccines help fight HIV and if the adenoviruses are contagious. Objectives: To test the safety and effects of three new HIV vaccines. Eligibility: Healthy adults 18 49 years old (vaccinees) Their household and intimate contacts 18 65 years old Design: Vaccinees will be screened with: Physical exam Medical history Blood and urine tests Questions about HIV risk Vaccinees will learn how to prevent spreading the viruses and about required contraception during the study. Vaccinees will get consent forms for their household and intimate contacts. All contacts must be age 18 65. All intimate contacts must sign a consent form. Contacts will have 4 visits over 8 months for blood tests and a physical exam. All applicable participants will have a pregnancy test at every visit. Vaccinees will have about 9 visits over 12 months. They will repeat screening tests and get: 1 of the 2 adenovirus vaccines sprayed in the nose at 2 visits The booster vaccine by needle in an arm at 1 visit Nasal swabs taken at some visits Vaccinees will note their temperature and symptoms for at least 1 4 weeks after each vaccine. Vaccinees may choose to have: Leukapheresis. Blood will be removed by needle in a vein in one arm. A machine will remove white blood cells. The rest of the blood will be returned into the other arm. Small pieces of the tonsil removed Sponsoring Institute: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases ...

Start: April 2019
Brain Effect of Vagal Nerve Stimulation at Rest and Pain

Pain is a ubiquitous distressing sensory experience and is the most frequent symptom in numerous gastrointestinal disorders including inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Visceral pain is especially difficult to treat with conventional medications and new treatments are needed. Recently, the relationship between autonomic nerve system (ANS) and pain has gathered attention because it could represent an effective treatment target for visceral pain. The parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), one of the two main branches of the ANS, is considered to play an important role for analgesia possibly due to vagal nerve-mediated activation of key brain areas implicated in descending analgesia of pain. Transcutaneous vagal nerve stimulation (tVNS) can non-invasively modulate vagal nerve and be expected as a new method to treat visceral pain. For example, the preliminary study showed that vagal nerve stimulation experimentally modulated cardiac vagal tone (CVT) and prevented the development of acid-induced oesophageal hyperalgesia. Disturbances in ANS function have been reported not only in IBS patients but also in fibromyalgia and chronic pelvic pain syndrome. Many of these disorders have been associated with differences in brain structure and/or function as demonstrated by the use of structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Of note, the investigators have recently shown that these differences in brain structure and function may be in part attributable to the aforementioned disturbance in ANS function, adding weight to the proposition that autonomic neuromodulation may be efficacious in pain disorders. For instance, in healthy participants the investigators have recently shown, using functional connectivity analysis, that higher resting parasympathetic CVT predicts the engagement of a subcortical functional network that is implicated in descending analgesia, thereby supporting the notion that vagal-mediated analgesia is achieved via descending inhibitory pathways1,4. Thus, tVNS seems a reasonable method to treat pain. However, to date, the precise real-time effect of tVNS on brain function, including during the processing of visceral pain is unknown. Hence, the aims of this study are to investigate the real-time effect of tVNS compared to sham stimulus on brain activity whilst experiencing acute oesophageal pain, using fMRI in double-blind, randomised crossover study of tVNS vs sham stimulation in healthy subjects.

Start: March 2020