Artificial intelligence was used by the UK Dementia Research Institute team at the Cardiff University, to investigate data from 103, 712 smartwatch wearers.
Over a single week, by tracking their speed of movement between 2013 and 2016, they were able to guess which would go on to develop Parkinson’s. it is hoped that this could finally be used as a screening tool.
Researchers in the Journal Nature Medicine say more studies comparing these assumptions with other data collected around the world, are needed to check how precise it will be. The brains of individuals with Parkinson’s disease may become damaged within many years.
Stiff and inflexible muscles, slow movement and involuntary shaking or tremors are few symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. But often there have been too much irreversible damage to brain cells by the time a diagnosis has been made.
Study leader Dr. Cynthia Sandor says, since 30% of the UK population wore smartwatches, this might be a cheap and reliable way to identify early-stage Parkinson’s. In the future, single week data captured can predict events up to seven years. With these outcomes, we could advance an important screening tool to support in the early detection of Parkinson’s. This has suggested both for research, in improving recruitment into clinical trials, and in clinical practice, in allowing patients to access treatments in an earlier stage in future, when such treatment become available.
Dr. Kathryn Peall, who worked on the study, told BBC News it seemed to be exact and distinguished Parkinson’s from other things that might affect movement, such as old age or weakness.
The model was compared across many different disorders, including other typed of neurodegenerative disorders, individuals with osteoarthritis, and other movement disorders, amongst others, a privileged of being able to work with a dataset such as the UK Biobank.
The consequences from people diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease were distinct.
But whether individuals should be told they had Parkinson’s, years before symptoms developed, will always remain an individual and personal choice.
Where this work is possibly important to the field is that we finally hope that new treatments that allow us to slow disease progression will become available.
