NCT00057707

Effects of Modafinil on Brain Function in Patients With Schizophrenia

Randomized, Double-Blinded, Placebo Controlled Study of the Effects of Modafinil on Cognitive Function in Patients With Schizophrenia and Normal Controls Based on COMT Genotype

• Status: Completed
• Phase: Phase 1
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 176 (actual)
• Sponsor: National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) · NIH
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 50 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

This study will evaluate whether modafinil improves cognition in patients with schizophrenia and healthy volunteers. Modafinil is a drug that has been FDA approved for day-time sleepiness and allegedly increase the amount of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the frontal cortex of the brain ...

Detailed description

Psychopharmacological modulation of the catecholaminergic system can enhance some aspects of cognitive function. For example, COMT inhibitors can slightly improve working memory/executive function. Similarly, modafinil, a catecholaminergic agonist that increases extracellular dopamine in the prefrontal cortex was also shown to improve delay-dependent working memory. Differences in the response between individuals might be related to a number of factors, including variations in the genes. The recent finding that a polymorphism in the catechol-o-methyl-transferase (COMT) gene, which produces a 4 fold change in enzyme activity, accounts for 4% of the variance in performance of working memory tasks in humans suggest that COMT genotype may predict response to COMT inhibitors or to other agonists that increase catecholaminergic function in the frontal cortex. In the present investigation our goal is to examine, in normal controls and patients with schizophrenia, the effect of modafinil, a drug that increases DA output in the frontal cortex, on cognitive function and brain physiology. We predict that both normal controls and patients with schizophrenia with the val/val genotype will have a significant improvement in working memory compared with individuals possessing other genotypes. Furthermore, in conjunction with other NIMH imaging protocols, we predict that modafinil will produce a similar genotype-dependent effect on the neurophysiological correlates related to working memory assayed with fMRI. The present protocol will provide new insights on the importance of this genetic polymorphism in the regulation of aminergic-controlled cognitive function in normal individuals. Furthermore, this protocol will test whether modafinil offers a new treatment -based on genotype - for cognitive impairment in schizophrenia. The FDA granted a waiver for the use of Modafinil in this study.

Conditions

• Schizophrenia
• Schizoaffective Disorder

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
DRUG	Modafinil	Placebo 1 week-Wash out 1 week - Drug 1 week (or vice versa)
PROCEDURE	Functional MRI
PROCEDURE	Neuropsychological Testing

Timeline

• Start date: 2003-03-26
• Primary completion: 2017-06-16
• Completion: 2017-06-16
• First posted: 2003-04-07
• Last updated: 2019-12-09

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States