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Obesity clinical trials at UCSF

12 in progress, 8 open to eligible people

Obesity means having too much body fat. UCSF is running studies to help Latino children drink fewer sugary beverages and to see if eating less processed food can help with depression. There is also research on improving diet for people with spinal cord injuries using video calls.

Showing trials for
  • Mobile Health Intervention to Reduce Sweet Beverage Consumption in Latino Children

    open to eligible people ages 12 months to 59 months

    Sugar-sweetened beverage consumption is a major contributor to childhood obesity, caries, fatty liver disease, and Type 2 diabetes. Latino children are more likely to consume sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) and to suffer from all of the aforementioned conditions. Reading out loud to children from birth through age 5 is critical for the promotion of language and early literacy skills. Children whose parents read aloud to them are more likely to start school with the skills required for early reading success. This is important as reading proficiency in third grade is the best predictor of high school graduation and career success. Latino children are less likely to be read to than non-Hispanic white children and at higher risk of entering kindergarten without critical early literacy skills. Thus, there is a pressing need for interventions to reduce SSB consumption among Latino children as well as interventions that promote reading out loud. Primary care is an optimal setting for such interventions. However, multiple demands on providers' time make it difficult to rely on in-person interventions. For this reason, it is critical to test intervention designs that do not rely directly on health care providers and that can be delivered remotely if needed. The investigators have developed two m-health interventions for Latino parents, one that promotes optimal beverage consumption patterns and one that promotes reading out loud to children. The purpose of this study is to test the impact of these interventions on child beverage intake patterns and the frequency with which parents read to children.

    San Francisco, California

  • Caloric Restriction and Activity to Reduce Chemoresistance in B-ALL

    open to eligible people ages 10-25

    This study is for older children, adolescents, and young adults with B-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (B-ALL). Higher amounts of body fat is associated with resistance to chemotherapy in patients with B-ALL. Chemotherapy during the first month causes large gains in body fat in most people, even those who start chemotherapy at a healthy weight. This study is being done to find out if caloric restriction achieved by a personalized nutritional menu and exercise plan during routine chemotherapy can make the patient's ALL more sensitive to chemotherapy and also reduce the amount of body fat gained during treatment. The goals of this study are to help make chemotherapy more effective in treating the patient's leukemia as demonstrated by fewer patients with leukemia minimal residual disease (MRD) while also trying to reduce the amount of body fat that chemotherapy causes the patient to gain in the first month.

    San Francisco, California and other locations

  • Childcare Healthy Beverage Access, Food and Beverage Intake, and Obesity

    open to eligible people ages 2-105

    Interventions that promote water consumption in place of sugar-sweetened beverages have shown promise for preventing childhood obesity in schoolchildren. Yet to date, no studies have examined whether applying this approach in childcare centers could help to prevent childhood obesity at an even earlier stage of development. This cluster-randomized controlled trial will fill gaps by examining how a multilevel childcare-based healthy beverage intervention affects young children's consumption of beverages and obesity.

    Stanford, California

  • Diet and Depression

    open to eligible people ages 18-80

    This study is a pilot open label crossover trial to assess the feasibility and acceptability of reducing ultra- processed foods (UPF) in a personalized manner from the diets of patients with major depressive disorder who eat a large percentage of UPF.

    San Francisco, California

  • Dissemination and Implementation of the Bright Bodies Intervention for Childhood Obesity

    open to eligible people ages 7-13

    This study will evaluate the effectiveness of the Bright Bodies intervention in improving body mass index (BMI) among 7-13 year-old children with obesity simultaneously with the impact of the implementation strategy on adoption, reach, fidelity, cost, and maintenance of the intervention in three heterogenous settings serving patients disproportionately affected by obesity.

    San Francisco, California and other locations

  • Metabolic Health Improvement Program: Effects of a Workplace Sugary Beverages Sales Ban and Motivational Counseling

    open to eligible people ages 18 years and up

    The purpose of the study is to test the impact of a multilevel workplace intervention (hospital-wide sales ban on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) and individual-level brief counseling) on employee health.

    San Francisco, California

  • Telenutrition for Individuals With SCI

    open to eligible people ages 20 years and up

    This study will provide nutrition counseling via FaceTime on an iPad to persons with traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) who are overweight or obese and are at least one-year post-injury. Nutrition counseling may help participants to develop eating behaviors that match the participants' needs and help improve heart health. The purpose of this project is to decrease the risk of complications like obesity, high cholesterol, or diabetes, and explore associations between bowel and bladder function and nutrition. This study will require 3 in person visits that are about 3 months apart. The total length of the study is about 6 months and includes 3 months of telenutrition counseling.

    San Jose, California

  • Inflammation, Diabetes, Ethnicity and Obesity Cohort

    open to eligible people ages 18-75

    Obesity affects over one third of US adults (>72 million, with BMI ≥30 kg/m2), and the proportion of US adults with BMI ≥40 kg/m2 has doubled in the last 20 years. Obesity is associated with increased mortality through its linkage to comorbidities including diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, osteoarthritis, sleep apnea and psychosocial disturbances. Given its prevalence, impact on morbidity and mortality, and economic cost, limiting the spread of obesity and its consequences is one of the most important problems of our time. In this proposed study, investigators will recruit participants from a wide range of body mass index (BMI), ethnicity and Diabetes risk to collect data and blood, stool and adipose tissue samples in the San Francisco bay area.

    San Francisco, California

  • Breast Cancer WEight Loss Study (BWEL Study)

    Sorry, in progress, not accepting new patients

    This randomized phase III trial studies whether weight loss in overweight and obese women may prevent breast cancer from coming back (recurrence). Previous studies have found that women who are overweight or obese when their breast cancer is found (diagnosed) have a greater risk of their breast cancer recurring, as compared to women who were thinner when their cancer was diagnosed. This study aims to test whether overweight or obese women who take part in a weight loss program after being diagnosed with breast cancer have a lower rate of cancer recurrence as compared to women who do not take part in the weight loss program. This study will help to show whether weight loss programs should be a part of breast cancer treatment.

    San Francisco, California and other locations

  • Denosumab to Prevent High-Turnover Bone Loss After Bariatric Surgery

    Sorry, in progress, not accepting new patients

    Bariatric surgery leads to bone loss and increases fracture risk. This study evaluates whether denosumab can prevent the high-turnover bone loss that occurs after Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass (RYGB) and sleeve gastrectomy (SG) surgery.

    San Francisco, California and other locations

  • Futuros Fuertes 2.0

    Sorry, not yet accepting patients

    The goal of this study is to evaluate the impact of a primary care based intervention to promote optimal feeding, screen time and sleep practices among low-income Latino infants and toddlers. Infants and caregivers will receive brief health education and coaching sessions from health educators at primary care visits in the first two years of life as well as two text messages per week with health information and tips. Half of the participants will receive the Futuros Fuertes 2.0 intervention that includes health coaching and education on infant feeding, screen time and sleep (intervention group). The other half will receive health coaching and education on safety, home management of childhood illnesses, and promotion of language development (control group). We will look at the impact of the Futuros Fuertes 2.0 intervention on child BMI and various health behaviors.

    San Francisco, California

  • Methylglyoxal (MGO) Lowering Cocktail to Reduce Appetite in Obese Individuals

    Sorry, not yet accepting patients

    Mechanisms that drive addiction to sugar rich foods are a major driving factor in the pathogenesis of obesity, which has become one of the most significant health care burdens. The molecular underpinnings of these hedonic mechanisms that drive addiction to sugar are poorly understood. The investigators demonstrated that methylglyoxal (MGO) derived Advanced Glycation Endproducts (AGEs) enhance food intake especially under a high sugar diet. The investigators identified a methylglyoxal (MGO) lowering cocktail, Gly-low, a combination of alpha-lipoic acid, nicotinamide, thiamine, pyridoxamine, and piperine that demonstrates a multimodal effect influencing many pathways related to aging including calorie restriction. Glycation lowering (Gly-low) treatment significantly reduces food intake and weight gain in the db/db mice that lack the leptin receptor. The investigators also extended the lifespan of C57BL/6 mice fed with these compounds starting when they were 24 months old. Based on these results, the investigators hypothesized that methylglyoxal (MGO) lowering cocktail of compounds can be given to adults with obesity, specified as body mass index (BMI) >27, to lower serum and urinary markers of insulin resistance, lower boy mass index (BMI), and lower food intake.

    San Francisco, California

Our lead scientists for Obesity research studies include .

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