2023-07-24 19:05:21
MONTREAL — Smart watches could detect Parkinson’s disease several years before the first symptoms appear by analyzing the movements of the user, shows an experiment carried out in the United Kingdom.
Researchers at Cardiff University in Wales used artificial intelligence to analyze data from some 105,000 smartwatch users.
By measuring the speed of their movements for a single week, between 2013 and 2016, they were able to predict which users would eventually suffer from Parkinson’s disease. They were also able to distinguish Parkinson’s from other illnesses that might influence the user’s movements.
The authors of the study admit, however, that further experiments will be necessary to verify the validity of their results.
Parkinson’s disease begins to settle in the patient’s brain several years before the first symptoms appear, and it is already quite advanced when we finally notice that something is wrong.
There could therefore be an advantage in detecting it as soon as possible to try to limit the damage… but not necessarily today, warns Professor Louis-Éric Trudeau, a specialist at the University of Montreal.
“For now, there is no therapy that exists to prevent neurons from dying,” he said. So even if we tell a patient that he has a good chance of having Parkinson’s disease in seven years, it will not open the door to treatments that could correct this.
He therefore wonders about the relevance of announcing to a patient what awaits him in a few years, while admitting to him that nothing can be done about it for the moment. The information could be very interesting for the insurers, he adds, but perhaps a little less for the patient.
Mr. Trudeau compares the situation to sites that offer a complete analysis of our genetic profile to generate a report that will inform us of our risk of suffering from such a disease or health problem.
Whether or not to know should be entirely up to the patient, he said. There are people who just won’t want to know. And among those who will want to know, there will be those who are ill-equipped to handle the response and who will need support.
The use of smartwatches as a screening tool for Parkinson’s disease would be more relevant in a research context, he believes.
“As part of a clinical study, we could have a characterization of our participants with this kind of approach and we could already plan to better follow the progression of the disease, he explained.
“And in our control subjects, who normally are not affected by the disease, there may be some who are (developing it). This is all information that is really important for clinical research.”
The findings of this study were published by the scientific journal Nature Medicine.
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