Smartwatches have a number of sensors that you can use to record physical activity, heart rate or quality of sleep. Nastasic (Getty Images)
Before Parkinson’s disease becomes visible, those affected begin to write with smaller and smaller letters. Before they even realize it, they are holding down the cell phone buttons for longer when sending a message. And several years before the diagnosis, the first movement disorders appear. By the time the doctor makes the diagnosis, 60% or more of the neurons that produce dopamine have stopped doing so, revealing tremors, muscle stiffness and depression… Now a study involving thousands of people wearing smart watches on their wrists He was able to predict who will have evil long before it becomes apparent.
A study has been running since 2006 in which UK health authorities have been following the health evolution of half a million people then aged over 40 (UK Biobank). A decade later, 103,712 of them received smartwatches that allowed them to track their activities for a week. This data was used by a group of scientists to investigate something that scientists are desperate to find: an objective marker for Parkinson’s that can be used to detect it early. When they put the watches on, there were 273 with a clinical diagnosis of Parkinson’s. And since then, another 196 have been diagnosed. The data from these two groups was key to detecting the abnormal signal that indicates something is wrong in the substantia nigra, the part of the brain that degenerates as the disease progresses.
“[Las personas con párkinson] They can produce subtle motor or non-motor symptoms that often go unnoticed by the sufferer themselves.
Cynthia Sandor, researcher in neurodegenerative diseases at Cardiff University
“Parkinson’s is a neurodegenerative movement disorder characterized by slow disease progression,” recalls Cynthia Sandor, a researcher at Cardiff University (UK) and co-author of the study. “Sufferers experience motor symptoms such as slow movements, stiffness, lack of coordination, and tremors,” he adds. All of these prodromes, or signs that precede the disease, appear long before they are diagnosed. “They can produce subtle motor or non-motor symptoms that often go unnoticed by the person themselves.” But they’ve also noticed the accelerometers, magnetometers, and gyroscopes found in activity bracelets or smartwatches. In theory, cell phones also have all this technology, but if you don’t carry it with you at all times, your data would become invalid.
For this work, they relied on data from the accelerometers worn by smartwatches. This sensor registers acceleration, the start of every movement, and is represented in a three-dimensional system that changes every second. To distinguish characteristic patterns in the thousands and thousands of resulting diagrams, the scientists relied on an artificial intelligence system. The results of this work, just published in the journal Nature Medicine, show a decrease in mobility between 7am and 12pm in people diagnosed with Parkinson’s when the watches were fitted. Artificial intelligence was able to distinguish this pattern from the more than 40,000 people they used as a control group.
With this training, the researchers went a step further and also identified the nearly 200 people who were diagnosed an average of 4.33 years after their movements were recorded. In some cases, the discovery occurred up to 7 years earlier. “We show that a single week of collected data can predict events up to seven years in advance. With these results, we could develop a valuable tool to help in the early detection of Parkinson’s disease,” says Sandor, Head of the Institute for Dementia Research in the UK. Data from smartwatches is easily accessible and in this country at least, a third of the population is already using it. A platform would need to be put in place to centralize the data, and the study authors are not unaware of the technological issues and the legal and privacy implications, but there is no cure for Parkinson’s and all therapies to stop its progression have failed.
The head of neurology at the Gregorio Marañón Hospital (Madrid), Francisco Grandas, a great expert on Parkinson’s, recalls that all the treatments available are symptomatic, improve the patient’s condition “but do not prevent its progression”. He also says that there are several studies, several drugs in the experimental phase, designed to slow down progress, but so far have had no success. “In addition to problems like the blood-brain barrier.” [membrana que protege al tejido cerebral]”We suspect that it could be because the moment is already over because the disease is already at an advanced stage,” adds Grandas. That’s why he appreciates this new job. “Other markers are being studied, such as B. Brain imaging, lifestyle, blood biochemistry… Years ago, non-motor symptoms appeared first, but now we’re beginning to learn that there are also subtle motor signs and these systems to analyze those movements. “could recognize them,” he concludes. This would open up the possibility of using these experimental treatments in the prodromal phase of the disease.
“Disease-modifying therapies are ineffective in the clinical phase of Parkinson’s disease. The likely reason is that the pathology of the disease is already too advanced at this point.”
Sirwan Darweesh, from the Department of Neurology at the Faculty of Medicine, Eramus University Rotterdam
Sirwan Darweesh from the Department of Neurology at the Faculty of Medicine at Eramus University in Rotterdam (Netherlands) has been studying the onset and development of Parkinson’s for years. In 1990, researchers from the university began a very ambitious study to monitor the health of all residents over the age of 55 in Ommord, a neighborhood in the Dutch city. As part of this work, Darwesh focused on one hundred people who were ultimately diagnosed with Parkinson’s. Based on his research, Darwesh can state that “the pathology of the disease begins more than two decades before a clinical diagnosis can be made.” The first symptoms usually appear 10 years before surgery. Darwesh agrees with the Spanish Grandas that the diagnosis comes too late: “Disease-modifying therapies are ineffective in the clinical phase of Parkinson’s. The likely reason for this is that the pathology of the disease is already too advanced at this point, since more than 60% of the main brain dopaminergic cells have already been exhausted at the time of diagnosis.”
One of the weaknesses of this research is that the clocks only lasted a week to record activity, but if applied to a real-world setting, accumulating data over time could refine the alert signal. Even before Sandor’s current work, a group of scientists in the US used artificial intelligence to recognize patterns in data from smartwatches. They also used the UK Biobank sample, but based on those who had already been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. One of the authors of this research is neurologist Karl Friedl from the University of California, San Francisco. A good snapshot is enough for him, about a whole week of movement sequences, “to recognize someone who suffers from Parkinson’s disease”. From a broader perspective, “we can help people discover many important traits of their health and well-being through the way they exercise,” adds Friedl. Furthermore, “If we add all the other prodromal features that are associated with Parkinson’s disease (anosmia, REM sleep disorder, depression…), the prediction algorithms will become very powerful in our new AI world,” he concludes.
Data on sleep behavior was also obtained precisely through work with smartwatches, in this case with a sample of 65,000 people. Again, artificial intelligence was able to detect a deterioration in sleep duration and quality in both those diagnosed when their activity was recorded and those diagnosed years later. “The clocks tell us that people wake up more often at night and sleep longer several years before they are diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease,” says Sandor. Combined with day and night data, the accelerometers could give doctors time to try to contain the disease.
you can follow THE COUNTRY Health and well-being on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.