Clinical Trials

Pneumonia is a major public health problem for the elderly and is one of the leading causes of hospitalization and death for this population, particularly for elderly nursing home residents. This planning grants seeks to establish a safe and effective dose of zinc supplementation with the goal to conduct a larger randomized clinical trial to study the effect of zinc supplementation in nursing home elderly with low serum zinc levels on the risk, antibiotic use, and duration of sick days with pneumonia. This project has significant potential to positively impact the health and quality of life in the elderly and to reduce the economic costs associated with their care.

The investigators' central hypothesis is that early combination therapy with two PAH-specific oral therapies that have been shown to be well tolerated in the pediatric population, sildenafil and bosentan, will result in better World Health Organization (WHO) functional class at 12 months after initiation of PAH treatment than therapy with sildenafil alone.

Do you or your child have pulmonary hypertension and want to help research? This study is looking to better understand pulmonary hypertension in children who have this condition. To participate in this study, you or your child must be 21 years old or younger and must have been diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension before the age of 18. This study is located at multiple sites across the United States and Canada, including California, Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Alberta, Canada.

Are you an adult who has idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis or an advanced lung cancer? This study aims to see whether a new imaging dye for positron emission tomography (PET) is effective at looking at fibrosis in lung cancer and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). Participants will be given the imaging dye and then receive a PET scan. To participate in this study, you must either be between 18 and 80 years old and have lung cancer or be a healthy volunteer or be between 50 and 80 years old and have IPF. This study is located in Boston, Massachusetts.