NCT05492032

Cumulative and Booster Effects of Multisession Prefrontal Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation in Adolescents With ASD

Recruiting now NA Last updated 26 November 2025

What this trial tests

NA trial testing Active-tDCS in Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation in 150 participants. Currently enrolling.

Timeline

2 June 2022

Primary endpoint
30 September 2026

31 December 2026

Quick facts

Lead sponsor	The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Phase	NA
Status	Recruiting now
Study type	INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation	randomized
Design	parallel
Masking	triple
Primary purpose	treatment
Enrollment	150
Start date	2 June 2022
Primary completion	30 September 2026
Estimated completion	31 December 2026
Sites	1 location across Hong Kong

Drugs / interventions tested

• Active-tDCS
• Sham-tDCS
• Cognitive training

Conditions studied

• Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation — all drugs for Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation →
• Autistic Spectrum Disorder — all drugs for Autistic Spectrum Disorder →
• Electroencephalography — all drugs for Electroencephalography →
• Booster Effects — all drugs for Booster Effects →

Sponsor

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Who can join

Adults 12 to 21, any sex, with Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation or Autistic Spectrum Disorder. Patients with the condition only — healthy volunteers not accepted.

Sponsor's own description

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a pervasive and lifelong developmental disorder that currently affects 1 in 54 children. Individuals with autism are often severely impaired in communication, social skills, and cognitive functions. Particularly detrimental characteristics typical of ASD include the inability to relate to people and the display of repetitive stereotyped behaviors and uncontrollable temper outbursts over trivial changes in the environment, which often cause emotional stress for the children, their families, schools and neighborhood communities. To date, there is no cure for ASD, and the disorder remains a highly disabling condition. Recently, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a noninvasive neuromodulation technique, has shown great promise as an effective and cost-effective tool for reducing core symptoms, such as anxiety, aggression, impulsivity, and poor social communication, in patients with autism. Although the empirical findings in patients with ASD are encouraging, it remains to be determined whether these experimental data can be translated into real-world benefits. An important next step is to better understand the factors affecting the long-term efficacy of tDCS treatment - in particular, the possible risk factors associated with relapse in patients with ASD and the role of booster session tDCS as an add-on treatment to induce long-lasting neuroplastic effects in ASD.

Publications & conference data

1 peer-reviewed publication reference this trial (live from Europe PMC):

1. Effects of transcranial direct current stimulation in children and young people with psychiatric disorders: a systematic review.
   Gallop L, Westwood SJ, Lewis Y, Campbell IC, et al · · 2024 · cited 9× · PMID 36764973 · DOI 10.1007/s00787-023-02157-0