Inflammation clinical trials at University of California Health

The purpose of this study is to use an experimental inflammatory challenge to examine whether older adults with symptoms of anxiety experience loss of pleasure or loss of motivation when they are exposed to inflammation. Loss of pleasure or loss of motivation will be evaluated using self-report questionnaires, computer tasks, and during a brain scan.

UCLA researchers looking for healthy individuals (age 45-60) to participate in a study investigating whether an anti-inflammatory medication can impact daily life experiences. Everyday for four weeks, participants will take either an anti-inflammatory medication (naproxen) twice daily, or a placebo pill twice daily. Participants will also answer daily questions during the 2-week period. Participants will also fill out questionnaires and complete a few tasks on the computer: once prior to the 2-week period and once immediately after the 2-week period, both during online study sessions.

Sleep disturbance has a range of negative effects on psychosocial and biological processes important for academic and social success as well as mental and physical health among adolescents and young adults. Limited, inconsistent, and poor quality sleep lead to anxiety, depressive feelings, loneliness, and fatigue over time. These symptoms, in turn, interfere with the ability to get a good night's rest. Sleep disruption can also upregulate inflammatory processes during the years of adolescence and young adulthood in ways that can create risk for the development of chronic health conditions (e.g., diabetes, depression, cardiovascular disease) in later adulthood. Sleep, however, is also a modifiable health behavior, leading many institutions to embark upon efforts to improve the sleep of their students. The challenge is to identify programs and interventions that can simultaneously improve sleep, be delivered at scale, and be easily completed by students. UCLA has developed and validated a group-based mindfulness intervention, Mindful Awareness Practices (MAPs), that has demonstrated beneficial effects on sleep in adults and may offer a promising, scalable approach for reducing sleep disturbance and improving associated psychological and biological outcomes in college students. However, this approach requires validation in this population relative to sleep education programs, which increasingly dominate the college landscape. To address this important public health problem, the investigators propose to conduct a single site, two-arm, parallel group randomized controlled trial to test the efficacy of the validated, group-based, six-week MAPs intervention vs. sleep education, an active time and attention matched control condition, for first year undergraduate students who report poor sleep at this critical transition year. The investigators are aiming to enroll approximately 240 participants. Participants will complete questionnaires, provide blood samples for immune analysis and will be provided with wrist actigraphs to wear for 7 days, in order to collect objective measurements of sleep at pre- and post-intervention visits, and at a 3-month follow-up visit. Additional follow-up assessments will take place at 6-month, and 12-month post-intervention to evaluate persistence of effects.