2023-07-03 17:58:01
Updated Monday, July 3, 2023 – 17:58
Identifying individuals at risk of developing the disease will help design therapies against it
ALBERT OF LOLLI
The Parkinson’s disease It is usually diagnosed when symptoms are evident and neuronal damage is irreversible. But a study published today in the journal ‘Nature Medicine’ suggests that data on movements of a person can help diagnose the disease early.
Although the researchers themselves warn that more research is neededthe document explains that recording a person’s movement data could be a cheap and non-invasive alternative to detection mass and to the identification of populations with more odds of suffering from the disease.
Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disorder without treatment that causes the progressive loss of neurons related to the motor function.
The diagnosis usually comes when the neurodegeneration takes several years ongoing and between 50-70% of motor function neurons are affected.
Identifying individuals at risk of developing Parkinson’s disease would also help design therapies against itaccording to the authors.
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A STUDY WITH MORE THAN 100,000 PEOPLE
To do the study, Cynthia Sandor of the Cardiff University (UK), and his team used information about 103,000 people from the UK Biobanka huge database of half a million people between 40 and 69 years that is available to the scientific community.
Among the data stored in the Biobank, there were records of spontaneous movements of those patients who, a few years ago, took themselves for a week with the help of a wrist accelerometer.
The team wanted to find out if this data collected by the movement tracking devices could help identify cases of disease Parkinson’s prior to clinical diagnosis.
Using machine learning models trained on the information collected by the movement devices, the authors found that this data allowed them to identify Parkinson’s disease. better than clinical markers commonly used, such as those derived from lifestyle, genetics, blood biochemistry, and patient-reported symptoms.
Specifically, they observed that the patterns related to the speed of movement and quality of sleep were associated with a future onset of the disease.
They discovered that slowing down a person’s movements occurred several years before the diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, and that problems with sleep interruption they were more frequent in people who ended up being diagnosed with Parkinson’s than in those who suffered from other neurodegenerative and movement problems.
The authors argue that movement data could be a screening tool for low cost to identify people at risk of suffering from Parkinson’s disease, although they insist that it will be necessary repeat the investigation with other cohorts of people to to contrast and confirm your results.
AN INTERESTING STUDY
In statements to the Science Media Center Spain, the professor of Physiology and researcher at the University of Seville, José Lpez Barneo, believes that the study is “very interesting” and “of quality” because it has shown a “very strong” correlation between people who move little and slowly with suffering from Parkinson’s in the future.
Regarding the advantages of a person discovering several years before that it is very likely that they will suffer from the disease in the future, it is “very interesting and valuable from the scientific point of view” because It will help to better understand the pathogenesis of the disease. and test the effectiveness of new medicines protectors.
However, since there is still no no type of drug to prevent it“it is not clear that this brings any benefit to the future patient. It is an issue that has important ethical implications.”
Along the same lines, Jos Luis Lanciego, Senior Researcher at the Program for Gene Therapy in Neurodegenerative Diseases at the University of Navarra, appreciates that the study shows that movement data recorded with a portable device (such as a smartwatch or similar) is useful for Identify which people are most at risk of Parkinson’s and when.
But he believes that such early diagnosis is “of little” use to patients as long as they don’t have treatment neuro protector.
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