The monitoring and treatment of multiple sclerosis necessitates consistent and lengthy data on the progression of the disease in the individual. A recent study has demonstrated that fitness trackers and smartphones can provide this data. Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a devastating disease characterized by the immune system attacking the person’s own nerve fibers, leading to the disruption of nerve signal transmission. This results in a wide range of motor and sensory impairments, impacting the individual’s daily life and overall well-being.quality of life. The symptoms and progression of the disease vary from person to person, so the management of the disease also varies. Physicians regularly ask their patients to describe their symptoms, such as fatigue, in order to monitor the progression of the disease and recommend effective treatments.
Reliance on Memory
Patients are tasked with providing information about their health and capabilities from memory, covering the past few weeks or even months. However, this data may be inaccurate and incomplete, as patients may misremember.Researchers suggest that physicians may adjust their interactions with patients based on social expectations, which can impact the accuracy of disease progression monitoring. Shkurta Gashi, the lead author of a recent study and a postdoc in the groups led by ETH Professors Christian Holz and Gunnar Rätsch at the Department of Computer Science, as well as a fellow of the ETH AI Center, emphasizes the need for reliable, frequent, and long-term measurements of patients’ health parameters to provide a comprehensive view of their health status. This statement highlights the importance of accurate and comprehensive health data for physicians.m ETH Zurich, the University Hospital Zurich, and the University of Zurich, Gashi has demonstrated that fitness trackers and smartphones are capable of providing reliable long-term data with a high temporal resolution. The study was published in the journal NPJ Digital Medicine.
Digital markers for MS
The researchers enlisted a group of volunteers — 55 with MS and an additional 24 acting as control subjects — and equipped each individual with a fitness tracking armband. Over a period of two weeks, the researchers gathered data from these wearable devices as well as from the participants’ smartphones.We conducted statistical tests and used machine learning to analyze the data for reliable and clinically useful information. The data on physical activity and heart rate collected from participants’ wearable devices was particularly meaningful. We found that participants with higher disease severity and fatigue levels had lower physical activity and heart rate variability. In comparison to the controls, MS patients took fewer steps per day, had lower overall physical activity, and had more consistent intervals between heartbeats.Ten individuals who utilized their smartphones also provided crucial data regarding their illness severity and exhaustion levels. The study found that the less frequently a participant used their phone, the higher their disability level and the more intense their fatigue. Researchers were able to gain valuable insights into motor function through a smartphone test that resembles a game. Originally created at ETH several years ago, this test involves tapping the screen as rapidly as possible to make a virtual character move swiftly. By monitoring the speed and frequency of tapping, researchers can make inferences about an individual’s motor abilities.
The combination of data from the fitness tracker and smartphone allows for the distinction between healthy individuals and those with MS with a high level of accuracy. Gathering information related to various aspects of the disease, such as physiological, behavioral, motor performance, and sleep, is essential for more effective and precise disease monitoring,” says Gashi. This new approach provides MS patients with a simple way to gather dependable and clinically useful long-term data while carrying out their daily activities.
Archers anticipate that this data could improve treatments and disease management techniques. More thorough and accurate data can help experts make better decisions and potentially suggest effective treatments sooner. Furthermore, analyzing patient data allows experts to confirm the effectiveness of various treatments.
The researchers have now shared their dataset with other scientists. They also emphasize the importance of a larger study and more data to create reliable and generalizable models for automatic evaluation. In the future, these models could empower MS patients to exp…People’s lives can be transformed for the better through the use of fitness trackers and smartphones, as evidenced by recent studies. The journal reference for this information is: Shkurta Gashi, Pietro Oldrati, Max Moebus, Marc Hilty, Liliana Barrios, Firat Ozdemir, Veronika Kana, Andreas Lutterotti, Gunnar Rätsch, Christian Holz. “Modeling multiple sclerosis using mobile and wearable sensor data”. npj Digital Medicine, 2024; 7 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41746-024-01025-8The following article has been paraphrased for easier reading:
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