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Withdrawn Not applicable Interventional

tDCS in Cervical Dystonia

ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT02180139

Public ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT02180139. 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.

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Official title

Optimizing tDCS in Cervical Dystonia

Brief summary

Reproduced verbatim from the official ClinicalTrials.gov record. Not medical advice.

Dystonia is a devastating disorder defined by involuntary, sustained muscle contractions or abnormal postures that can affect any part of the body. Cervical dystonia (CD) is the most pervasive form of dystonia affecting 60-90,000 individuals in the United States alone and is characterized by involuntary twisting of the neck. The symptoms of CD are disabling, disfiguring, painful, and have a strongly negative impact on quality of life, including social withdrawal and depression. At present, there is no treatment that has been shown to have long term benefit in CD. Standard of care (SOC) is botulinum toxin, which temporarily paralyzes affected muscles, resulting in reduced muscle spasms. This treatment has many undesirable side effects, variable effectiveness, is expensive, and must be repeated every 3 months throughout the lifespan. Physical therapy based treatments aimed at retraining posture or stretching dystonic muscles are largely ineffective and not typically delivered as a part of standard of care. There is an urgent need for novel and effective therapies. Emerging technologies, specifically non-invasive brain stimulation (NBS), have demonstrated compelling evidence to make a meaningful impact in the lives of people with CD. In this study, individuals with cervical dystonia will be randomly assigned to receive tDCS for 15 minutes daily for 4 days in 1 of 4 stimulation location groups. Hypothesis 1: One location of stimulation will result in clear benefit with at least 1 standard deviation (SD) improvement in the CDQ-24, the primary outcome measure, at 1-week follow-up. Hypothesis 2: The cortical silent period will be the most sensitive measure investigated and will demonstrate significant increase in inhibition as determined by an elongation of silent period in the affected upper trapezius muscle. Hypothesis 3: The stimulation location determined to be most effective in Objective 1 will produce the greatest physiologic change in inhibition increase. Hypothesis 4: The hypothesis for this aim is if certain characteristics can predict response to treatment, a strong association will be seen between baseline measure(s) and the primary outcome measure. A thorough assessment of characteristics including: age, sex, duration of symptoms, genotyping for two specific polymorphisms, botulinum toxin history, baseline measures of outcome variables, measures of brain excitability, and genetic testing will predict response.

Study identification

NCT ID
NCT02180139
Recruitment status
Withdrawn
Study type
Interventional
Phase
Not applicable
Lead sponsor
University of Minnesota
Other
Enrollment
Not listed

Conditions and interventions

Eligibility (public fields only)

Age range
21 Years to 65 Years
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
Aug 31, 2017
Primary completion
Aug 31, 2017
Completion
Nov 30, 2017
Last update posted
Oct 2, 2017

2017

United States locations

U.S. sites
1
U.S. states
1
U.S. cities
1
Facility City State ZIP Site status
University of Minnesota Minneapolis Minnesota 55455

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 NCT02180139, 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 Oct 2, 2017 · Synced Sep 2, 2026

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Open the official record

The complete protocol, eligibility criteria, and contact information for NCT02180139 live on ClinicalTrials.gov.

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