Clinical trialNCT02862210CompletedPhase 2Interventional

Low-Dose Lithium for the Treatment of Behavioral Symptoms in Frontotemporal Dementia

SponsorColumbia UniversityEnrollment17Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD)

View the registry record on ClinicalTrials.gov

Summary

The lay summary the sponsor registered on ClinicalTrials.gov.

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a progressive neurodegenerative illness that affects the frontal and anterior temporal lobes of the brain. Changes in behavior, including agitation, aggression, and repetitive behaviors, are common symptoms in FTD. The investigators currently do not have good medications to treat these symptoms in FTD, and the medications the investigators use often have side effects. In this project, the investigators will test the use of low-dose lithium, compared to a placebo pill, for the treatment of behavioral symptoms in FTD. Lithium greatly reduces the behavioral symptoms of bipolar disorder, and many have found low-dose lithium to be well-tolerated in patients with dementia. Lithium appears to inhibit the creation of a protein involved in many cases of FTD called tau.

clinicaltrials.gov ↗

Investigators

The overall officials registered on this study. Names that resolve to a findmyKOL profile link to it; the rest are shown as registered.

Edward Huey, MD
Brown University
Principal Investigator
clinicaltrials.gov ↗

A profile link is shown only when the registered name resolves to a person record with a confident, namesake-checked match; ambiguous names stay unlinked.

Sites

1 registered facility, with the per-site recruitment status where the registry publishes one. ClinicalTrials.gov does not publish per-site enrollment counts.

United States

Columbia University Irving Medical Center
New York, New York, United States

Site investigator names are published by ClinicalTrials.gov only while a study recruits, so completed studies list sites without them.

Drugs studied

The drug and biological interventions registered on this study, normalized to their RxNorm ingredient where possible.

Lithium carbonate →Placebo

Linked drugs open the directory filtered to KOLs working with them.clinicaltrials.gov ↗

Registration & key dates

Registry attributes as recorded on the ClinicalTrials.gov study record.

Start: 27 Jan 2017
Primary completion: 20 Nov 2022
Completion: 20 Nov 2022
Last update posted: 3 Feb 2025
Registered enrollment: 17
Registry id: NCT02862210

clinicaltrials.gov ↗

Source: ClinicalTrials.gov, via the CTTI AACT database, data as of 24 Aug 2026. Registry facts are shown as registered by the study sponsor; findmyKOL does not interpret them.