Improving Function in Age-Related Macular Degeneration
Public ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT00572039. Field values are reproduced from the official study page; the official ClinicalTrials.gov record remains the source of truth for eligibility, enrollment, and contact information.
Data is sourced from official ClinicalTrials.gov public API records. Always review the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for the latest information.
Brief summary
Reproduced verbatim from the official ClinicalTrials.gov record. Not medical advice.
This randomized, controlled clinical trial will test the efficacy of Problem-Solving Treatment (PST) to improve vision function in older persons with age-related macular degeneration (AMD). AMD is a highly prevalent, disabling disease of aging that causes severe vision loss and functional decline. It is the leading cause of blindness in older persons in the United States and may affect more than 10 million people. Currently, there are no effective treatments to restore vision. Thus, improving Vision Function is a major goal of treatment. Vision function refers to vision-related abilities to perform daily living activities (e.g. reading recipes to prepare meals). Decrements in vision function will become a major public health problem as the population ages and the prevalence of AMD increases. PST is a brief, standardized, cognitive-behavioral treatment that teaches problem-solving skills. We believe PST will enable patients with AMD find practical solutions to vision-related problems and thereby improve vision function. We will recruit 240 AMD patients from the retina clinics of Wills Eye Institute, Philadelphia, PA, with bilateral AMD and visual acuity worse than 20/70 in the better eye. PST-trained therapists will deliver 6 1-hour, in-home sessions to the 120 subjects randomized to PST. The control treatment is Supportive Therapy (ST), a similarly structured, standardized psychological treatment that controls for the non-specific effects of treatment (n=120). ST contains no active elements beyond its non-specific components; in this way it is a placebo treatment. Independent raters, masked to treatment assignment, will assess Targeted Vision Function (primary outcome) and vision-related quality of life (secondary outcome) at 3 months to assess PST's efficacy, and at 6 months to evaluate its long-term effects. As the population ages, the disability of AMD will become more prevalent, costly, and burdensome to patients, families, and ophthalmologists. This makes devising and testing practical and affordable interventions to improve vision function a national priority.
Study identification
- NCT ID
- NCT00572039
- Recruitment status
- Completed
- Study type
- Interventional
- Phase
- Phase 3
- Enrollment
- 241 participants
Conditions and interventions
Conditions
Eligibility (public fields only)
- Age range
- 65 Years and older
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Healthy volunteers not accepted
This page does not interpret eligibility. Detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria are on the official ClinicalTrials.gov record.
Study timeline
- Start date
- Jul 31, 2005
- Primary completion
- May 31, 2013
- Completion
- May 31, 2013
- Last update posted
- Apr 14, 2025
2005 – 2013
United States locations
- U.S. sites
- 1
- U.S. states
- 1
- U.S. cities
- 1
| Facility | City | State | ZIP | Site status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thomas Jefferson University | Philadelphia | Pennsylvania | 19107 | — |
Site contact phone numbers, emails, and investigator names are intentionally not displayed here. Open the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for site contact information.
About this trial record page
- What this page shows
- Public field values for ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT00572039, including study identification, conditions, interventions, eligibility (age, sex, healthy volunteer), timeline, and U.S. site list.
- What this page does not do
- No medical advice, eligibility judgments, treatment recommendations, study quality scoring, or AI-generated medical summaries. No site contact phone numbers, emails, or investigator names.
- Where the data comes from
- Sourced from the official ClinicalTrials.gov public API. The official record is the source of truth.
- Last refresh
- Last update posted Apr 14, 2025 · Synced Sep 5, 2026
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Open the official record
The complete protocol, eligibility criteria, and contact information for NCT00572039 live on ClinicalTrials.gov.