Clinical Research Directory

Implementing DBT in Short-Term SUD-treatment

The main objective of the study is to provide new knowledge about the implementation of DBT-informed environmental therapy in short-term substance use disorder (SUD) inpatient treatment. The study will examine which organizational and clinical conditions promote or inhibit implementation in clinical practice by elucidating how the implementation is experienced by staff (including experiences with structure, skill focus and environmental therapeutic principles) related to DBT-informed environmental therapy, DBT-SUD skill groups and patients' perceived satisfaction and utility. A secondary and exploratory aim is to examine preliminary trends in clinical measures in patients over time, including changes in symptom burden and reported use of DBT skills throughout the course of treatment. The study further seeks, at a descriptive and hypothesis-generating level, to explore patterns in patient-reported conditions related to substance abuse, emotion regulation, and other clinical burden. The sample will consist of up to 70 adult patients and 12 staff. One half of the patients will receive ordinary short-term inpatient treatment, while the other half will receive DBT informs milieu therapy after the approach has been established in clinical practice without being implemented. All patients will complete questionnaires upon admission (baseline), week 6 and upon discharge (week 12).

The Effect of Inspiratory Muscle Training With Substance Use Disorder

The aim was to investigate the effectiveness of inspiratory muscle training on dyspnoea, pulmonary function, respiratory muscle strength, cough capacity, functional exercise capacity, substance craving, depression, anxiety and quality of life in individuals with substance use disorder.

LIFUS For Neurological Disorders

Low intensity focused ultrasound (LIFUS) has the potential to be used as a means of non-invasive neuro-modulation. To this day, the use of LIFUS is under investigation. Studies in healthy subjects have shown that application of LIFUS to the motor region of the brain can mildly decrease neuron excitability in healthy controls. The purpose of the present study is to evaluate the effects of LIFUS on brain tissue excitability in patients with movement disorders in order to elucidate the therapeutic potential of LIFUS.

Cross-sectional Functional Stratification Based on Psychometric Profiling and Machine Learning in Patients With Substance Use Disorders (SUD)

Substance use disorders (SUDs) show considerable clinical heterogeneity that limits the usefulness of traditional categorical diagnoses. This observational, cross-sectional study aims to apply an unsupervised deep learning method - an autoencoder - to learn continuous latent representations from standardised psychometric data and to explore whether those representations can help stratify clinical subpopulations. The investigators will recruit 155 adults undergoing residential treatment for SUD. Participants will complete six validated instruments assessing impulsivity (BIS-11), anger regulation (STAXI-2), behavioural activation/avoidance (BADS), borderline symptomatology (BSL-23), generalised anxiety (GAD-7), and environmental reward (EROS). Demographic and clinical variables (age, sex, primary substance, years of use, prior treatments) will also be recorded. After data cleaning and standardisation (z-scores), a symmetric autoencoder with a 12-dimensional bottleneck (architecture 21-32-24-12-24-32-21) will be trained using mean squared error loss. Regularisation includes L2 weight decay and dropout. The model will be trained 30 times with different random seeds to assess stability; the five best models (by validation pseudo-R²) will be combined into a weighted ensemble. Five-fold cross-validation will evaluate generalisation. For comparison, principal component analysis (PCA) will be applied to the same data. Gaussian mixture models (GMM) will be fitted on the latent space to explore potential clinical subgroups. The primary outcome is the stability of the latent representation (coefficient of variation of validation MSE across runs). Secondary outcomes include reconstruction performance (pseudo-R²) of the ensemble, comparison with PCA, and the interpretability of latent dimensions via correlations with original variables. GMM results will be described using BIC, silhouette width, bootstrap stability, and clinical characterisation of clusters. This study does not involve any intervention. Results will be hypothesis-generating and require external validation. No automated clinical decisions will be made.

JomCare Study - A Harm Reduction Study

Chemsex, the use of psychoactive drugs before or during sexual activity, is a growing public health concern associated with striking increases in HIV, particularly among men who have sex with men (MSM). This study proposes to optimize an app-based just-in-time adaptive intervention, called JomCare, which aims to reduce chemsex risk by delivering tailored support when a person is most likely to be vulnerable to chemsex risk behaviors and receptive to intervention, with the purpose of reducing risk and averting new HIV infections.

Assessments of Obsessive-compulsive Symptoms in Patients With Substances Use Disorder

This observational, cross-sectional case-control study evaluates obsessive-compulsive symptoms among adults with substance use disorder compared with a demographically similar control group without substance use disorder. Patients aged 18-50 years attending the addiction management inpatient and outpatient services at Assiut University Hospital, and healthy controls recruited from relatives, friends, and hospital staff, will complete structured clinical interviews, the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale, and other standardized scales for psychiatric symptoms, cognition, and quality of life. The main objective is to estimate the prevalence and severity of obsessive-compulsive symptoms in substance use disorder and examine their associations with sociodemographic and clinical factors, addiction severity, and quality of life in the recovery stage.

Machine Learning Technology in Predicting Relapse and Implementing Peer Recovery Intervention Before Drug Use Occurs

The goal of this clinical trial is to study the relationship between substance cravings, cognitive performance, behaviors, and physiological markers in individuals with substance use disorder, as well as the effects of peer recovery intervention in response to abnormal biomarker data detected by wearable technology (e.g., Oura ring, smart watch) and participant responses to questionnaires and cognitive tasks completed on the RNI Health application.

Examining Clinical Research Participation for Substance Abuse Disorder Patient

Clinical study participation percentages haven't always been fully representative of a given demographic. The goal is to find out which aspects of a clinical trial may make it more difficult for patients to take part or see it through. The data will be evaluated through different demographic lenses and identify trends that could help improve the experience of future substance abuse disorder patients during clinical trials.