Southern Highlands research scientist Dr Warwick Adams has just released a new home-based tool for the early detection of Parkinson's Disease (PD).
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It is an important world first, as until now there has not been any definitive diagnostic test for PD, which is the second-most common neurodegenerative disease in the over-60's.
Parkinson's Disease currently affects some 80,000 Australians and 8 million people worldwide.
Because the early symptoms of PD are subtle, varied and imprecise, non-specialist doctors miss it in many cases and someone can have PD for up to a decade before it's diagnosed.
The new tool, KeySense®, provides a simple, free screening assessment that people can use on their computer in just a few minutes.
Parkinson's is caused by the loss of dopamine-producing neurons in the brain which controls movement such as in the legs, arms and fingers.
Of these, finger movement can be measured very precisely as someone types on a keyboard, and this is at the heart of the KeySense methodology.
Dr Adams said that until now the detection of PD relied on the observation of patients as they performed a series of movement tasks which typically required a neurologist or movement disorder specialist.
"There have been previous attempts to make this more objective and sensitive, but that has typically involved attaching specialised sensors to the patient's arms or legs," he said.
"These methods not only need extra equipment, but they also need the clinician to be specially trained.
"However keyboard typing is something that people can do themselves in their own home, and a variety of finger movement characteristics, especially rhythm and cadence patterns which change in someone with PD, can be assessed through a series of artificial intelligence (AI) models."
The initial university research took four years and involved 500 worldwide volunteers, both people with PD and a control group.
The methodology was tested on nearly 10,000 typing samples and was developed into the KeySense web application.
It is simple to complete and achieves a detection rate of 86 per cent with only 5 per cent false positives - better than that of most family doctors for the early stages of the disease.
The results are presented much like a blood test result - showing the expected ranges for various characteristics and flagging any that are outside the norm.
Dr Adams said the take-up rate so far showed that there was a huge pent-up demand for a screening test such as KeySense.
"Our usage stats so far indicate that there are tens of thousands of people who will use KeySense each year," he said.
"They may have a niggling worry about having some of the symptoms of Parkinson's, or may have discussed it with a doctor and are seeking an objective confirmation - a second opinion so to speak."
The KeySense typing assessment is available now at www.parkinsons-research.org.
It's completely free and users remain anonymous.
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