Parkinson’s disease is a long-term brain disorder that mainly affects movement. As the disease progresses, people may develop slower movements, stiffness, shaking, balance problems, and difficulty walking.
These symptoms often change throughout the day depending on medication and the stage of the disease.
Because of this, doctors need accurate information about how a person moves over time in order to adjust treatment and provide the best possible care.
Unfortunately, movement is usually assessed only during occasional clinic visits, meaning important changes can easily be missed.
In recent years, wearable devices such as smartwatches and movement trackers have offered a new way to monitor people at home. While these devices can collect valuable information, they also have drawbacks.
People need to remember to wear them every day, keep them charged, and use them correctly. Their accuracy can also be affected by the way someone moves their arms while walking.
Researchers from the UK Dementia Research Institute Care Research & Technology Center, which includes the University of Surrey, wanted to see whether sensors placed around the home could solve these problems. Their findings were published in the Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation.
The team recruited 15 people with mild Parkinson’s disease and 14 healthy volunteers. Participants completed a simple four-meter walking test inside a living laboratory designed to resemble a normal home. People with Parkinson’s completed the test twice: once shortly after taking their medication and again when the medication’s effects had started to wear off.
The researchers used two different technologies. One was a radar sensor that could detect movement without requiring the person to wear anything. The second was a depth camera that measured body movement and walking patterns. The sensors recorded important details such as stride length and the time between each step.
Both systems successfully identified differences between healthy volunteers and people with Parkinson’s when the patients’ medication was wearing off. The radar sensor was also able to detect changes in the same person as medication became less effective.
Interestingly, when participants had recently taken their medicine, neither sensor found clear differences compared with healthy adults. This suggests that the medication reduced many of the walking problems that the sensors were designed to detect.
The findings suggest that passive home sensors could one day allow doctors to monitor patients continuously without requiring them to wear special equipment. This could help identify changes earlier, measure how well medicines are working, and improve research into new Parkinson’s treatments. The study was published in the Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation.
Study review and analysis: This was a small early study involving only 29 participants, so larger studies will be needed before these systems become part of routine care. However, the findings are encouraging because the researchers tested the sensors under different medication conditions and compared them with healthy volunteers.
Unlike wearable devices, home-based sensors do not rely on people remembering to wear or charge equipment, which could provide more complete information over long periods.
If future studies confirm these results, this technology could help doctors adjust treatment earlier, improve clinical trials, and support more personalized care for people living with Parkinson’s disease.
If you care about Parkinson’s disease, please read studies that Vitamin B may slow down cognitive decline, and Mediterranean diet could help lower risk of Parkinson’s.
For more health information, please see recent studies about how wheat gluten might be influencing our brain health, and Olive oil: a daily dose for better brain health..
Source: University of Surrey.
