Since 2006, a study has been underway in which the U.K. health authorities have been monitoring the health of half a million people over the age of 40 (UK Biobank). A decade later, 103,712 of them were given smartwatches to record their activity for a week. These data have allowed a group of scientists to investigate something that science is eager to find: an objective marker of Parkinson’s that can be used for early detection. When they put the watches on, 273 of the participants had a clinical diagnosis of Parkinson’s. And since then, another 196 have been diagnosed. The data from these two groups have been key to detecting the abnormal signals that indicates that something is wrong in the substantia nigra, the part of the brain that degenerates as the disease progresses.
In the study, the researchers relied on the data offered by a smartwatch’s accelerometer. This sensor registers the acceleration, the beginning of each movement, and is represented in a three-dimensional system that changes with each second. To distinguish distinctive patterns in the thousands and thousands of resulting graphs, the scientists used an artificial intelligence system. The results of the study, which have just been published in the scientific journal Nature Medicine, show a decrease in mobility between 7 a.m. and 12 p.m. in people diagnosed with Parkinson’s when they put on the smartwatches. Artificial intelligence was able to differentiate this pattern from the more than 40,000 people in the control group.
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