Smartwatch Offers Reliable Insight into Parkinson’s Disease Treatment

Digital devices are more sensitive than clinician-dependent rating scales in identifying potential digital measures to assess new treatments for Parkinson’s disease, according to a new study published in npj Parkinson’s Disease. This study shows that readily accessible and ubiquitous technology has the potential to detect and objectively measure the severity and potential progression of important symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.

While Parkinson’s is the world’s fastest-growing brain disease, most of the drugs used to treat it were developed in the last century. The complexity of the disease and the limitation of current measures have been barriers to new therapies.

The onset and severity of symptoms—such as stiffness in the arms and legs, movement and walking difficulty, and tremors—and progression of the disease can vary significantly from patient to patient. Furthermore, the tools traditionally used to track the disease are only collected during visits to the clinic, limiting insight into how Parkinson’s disease affects people’s daily lives.

Better Monitoring with Smartwatch Will Lead to New Therapies in Parkinson’s Disease

Researchers have been pioneers in harnessing digital health technologies such as telemedicine, wearables, remote monitoring, and mobile apps to improve access to care and conduct decentralized clinical trials.

In 2015, they collaborated with Sage Bionetworks to launch the first smartphone research application to monitor Parkinson’s disease in real-time. Apple featured the app, called mPower, during their semi-annual product launch event, and 15,000 individuals participated in research using the application.

Studies have shown that mPower and another Android app can accurately track the severity of the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. Since the launch of mPower, the proliferation of smartwatches and technological improvements, has heightened the research potential of these devices.

In the new study, researchers at multiple sites across the U.S. recruited 82 individuals with early, untreated Parkinson’s and 50 age-matched controls and followed them for 12 months. The study volunteers wore research-grade sensors, an Apple Watch, and an iPhone while performing standardized assessments in the clinic.

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At home, participants wore the smartwatch for seven days after each clinic visit and completed motor, speech, and cognitive tasks on the smartphone every other week. The smartphone app tracked finger-taping speed, performance on cognitive tasks, and speech, while the smartwatch was able to measure arm movement, duration of tremors, and gait features.

They were able to detect motor and non-motor features that differed between individuals with early Parkinson’s and age-matched controls. Later, performed longitudinal analysis and followed participants for a longer period to determine which digital measures are sensitive enough to help researchers evaluate whether an experimental therapy is making a meaningful impact on the progression of the disease.

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These findings reinforce what other studies have shown—digital devices can differentiate between people with and without early Parkinson’s and are more sensitive than traditional rating scales for some measures of Parkinson’s diseases.



Source-Eurekalert