Efficacy and Mechanism of rTMS in Children With ASD: an Open-label Clinical Trial(Ⅱ)

Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Autism Spectrum Disorder

Treatments: Device: repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05472870

XHEC-C-2022-008-4

Details and patient eligibility

About

This study is a open-label clinical trial involving over 30 ASD children aged ≥4 years old. During the study, subjects received repeated transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) intervention on the left primary motor cortex (M1) 10 times per day for 5 consecutive days and complete clinical assessments from pre-intervention to post-intervention. This study hopes to explore whether accelerated continuous theta-burst stimulation (a-cTBS) over left primary motor cortex (M1) can improve clinical symptoms of children with ASD in China.

Full description

This study is a single-arm open-label clinical trial, designed to enroll at least 30 children with ASD aged over 4 years old.

During the trial, participants will receive accelerated continuous theta-burst stimulation (a-cTBS)on the left primary motor cortex (M1) for 5 consecutive days and complete clinical assessments within 2 weeks before the cTBS intervention (pre-cTBS), repeated within 3 days after the completion of the cTBS course (post-cTBS) and 1 month following the last cTBS session (one month follow-up), respectively. The purpose of this current study is to explore whether rTMS can improve the clinical symptoms of children with autism spectrum disorder in China, and to investigate the neurophysiological mechanism of rTMS for ASD children.

Enrollment: 30 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 4 to 16 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Children aged ≥4 years.
• Meeting the diagnostic criteria of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Edition 5 (DSM-5) .
• Confirmed by the ADOS and/or ADI-R diagnostic tool.
• Informed consent.

Exclusion criteria

• Patients with metal implants .
• Patients with neurological diseases such as epilepsy .
• Patients requiring surgical treatment due to structural abnormalities indicated by brain MRI .
• Genetic or chromosomal abnormalities .
• Suffering from mental disorders (such as mood disorders, etc.)
• Suffering from serious heart disease .
• Hearing-impaired .
• Intracranial hypertension .
• Participating in other clinical trials.
• Participants who received other interventions within 4 weeks prior to enrollment.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: N/A

Interventional model: Single Group Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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30 participants in 1 patient group

rTMS Group

Experimental group

Description:

Participants will receive cTBS over the left primary motor cortext (M1) for 5 consecutive days. The detailed parameters as follows: 80% of RMT, 60 cycles of 10 bursts of three pulses at 50 Hz were delivered in 2-second trains (5 Hz) with no intertrain interval (i.e. triplet standard cTBS, 1800 pulses, 120s). Stimulation sessions were delivered hourly, 10 sessions were applied per day (18,000 pulses/day).

Treatment:

Device: repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation