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AIM: To construct a Treatment Response Index from Multiple Sensors (TRIMS) for quantification of motor state in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) during a single levodopa dose. Another aim was to compare TRIMS to sensor indexes derived from individual motor tasks.

METHOD: Nineteen PD patients performed three motor tests including leg agility, pronation-supination movement of hands, and walking in a clinic while wearing inertial measurement unit sensors on their wrists and ankles. They performed the tests repeatedly before and after taking 150% of their individual oral levodopa-carbidopa equivalent morning dose.Three neurologists blinded to treatment status, viewed patients' videos and rated their motor symptoms, dyskinesia, overall motor state based on selected items of Unified PD Rating Scale (UPDRS) part III, Dyskinesia scale, and Treatment Response Scale (TRS). To build TRIMS, out of initially 178 extracted features from upper- and lower-limbs data, 39 features were selected by stepwise regression method and were used as input to support vector machines to be mapped to mean reference TRS scores using 10-fold cross-validation method. Test-retest reliability, responsiveness to medication, and correlation to TRS as well as other UPDRS items were evaluated for TRIMS.

RESULTS: The correlation of TRIMS with TRS was 0.93. TRIMS had good test-retest reliability (ICC = 0.83). Responsiveness of the TRIMS to medication was good compared to TRS indicating its power in capturing the treatment effects. TRIMS was highly correlated to dyskinesia (R = 0.85), bradykinesia (R = 0.84) and gait (R = 0.79) UPDRS items. Correlation of sensor index from the upper-limb to TRS was 0.89.

CONCLUSION: Using the fusion of upper- and lower-limbs sensor data to construct TRIMS provided accurate PD motor states estimation and responsive to treatment. In addition, quantification of upper-limb sensor data during walking test provided strong results.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Levodopa concentration in patients with Parkinson's disease is frequently modelled with ordinary differential equations (ODEs). Here, we investigate a pharmacokinetic model of plasma levodopa concentration in patients with Parkinson's disease by introducing stochasticity to separate the intra-individual variability into measurement and system noise, and to account for auto-correlated errors. We also investigate whether the induced stochasticity provides a better fit than the ODE approach.

METHODS: In this study, a system noise variable is added to the pharmacokinetic model for duodenal levodopa/carbidopa gel (LCIG) infusion described by three ODEs through a standard Wiener process, leading to a stochastic differential equations (SDE) model. The R package population stochastic modelling (PSM) was used for model fitting with data from previous studies for modelling plasma levodopa concentration and parameter estimation. First, the diffusion scale parameter (σ_w), measurement noise variance, and bioavailability are estimated with the SDE model. Second, σ_w is fixed to certain values from 0 to 1 and bioavailability is estimated. Cross-validation was performed to compare the average root mean square errors (RMSE) of predicted plasma levodopa concentration.

RESULTS: Both the ODE and the SDE models estimated bioavailability to be approximately 75%. The SDE model converged at different values of σ_w that were significantly different from zero. The average RMSE for the ODE model was 0.313, and the lowest average RMSE for the SDE model was 0.297 when σ_w was fixed to 0.9, and these two values are significantly different.

CONCLUSIONS: The SDE model provided a better fit for LCIG plasma levodopa concentration by approximately 5.5% in terms of mean percentage change of RMSE.

INTRODUCTION: A treatment response objective index (TRIS) was previously developed based on sensor data from pronation-supination tests. This study aimed to examine the performance of TRIS for medication effects in a new population sample with Parkinson's disease (PD) and its usefulness for constructing individual dose-response models.

METHODS: Twenty-five patients with PD performed a series of tasks throughout a levodopa challenge while wearing sensors. TRIS was used to determine motor changes in pronation-supination tests following a single levodopa dose, and was compared to clinical ratings including the Treatment Response Scale (TRS) and six sub-items of the UPDRS part III.

RESULTS: As expected, correlations between TRIS and clinical ratings were lower in the new population than in the initial study. TRIS was still significantly correlated to TRS (r_s = 0.23, P < 0.001) with a root mean square error (RMSE) of 1.33. For the patients (n = 17) with a good levodopa response and clear motor fluctuations, a stronger correlation was found (r_s = 0.38, RMSE = 1.29, P < 0.001). The mean TRIS increased significantly when patients went from the practically defined off to their best on state (P = 0.024). Individual dose-response models could be fitted for more participants when TRIS was used for modelling than when TRS ratings were used.

CONCLUSION: The objective sensor index shows promise for constructing individual dose-response models, but further evaluations and retraining of the TRIS algorithm are desirable to improve its performance and to ensure its clinical effectiveness.

Patients with Parkinson disease (PD) exhibit a gait disorder called festinating gait which is caused by deficiency of dopamine in the basal ganglia. To analyze gait of patients with PD, different spatiotemporal parameters such as stride length, cadence, and walking speed should be calculated. This paper aims to present a method to extract useful information represented by the positions of certain landmarks on the human body that can be used for analysis of PD patients’ gait. This method is tested using 132 videos collected from 7 PD patients and 7 healthy controls. The positions of 4 body landmarks, namely body’s center of gravity (COG), the position of the head, and the position of the feet, was computed using a total of more than 41000 of video frames. Results of object’s movement plots show high level of accuracy in the calculation of the body landmarks.

OBJECTIVE: Dosing schedules for oral levodopa in advanced stages of Parkinson's disease (PD) require careful tailoring to fit the needs of each patient. This study proposes a dosing algorithm for oral administration of levodopa and evaluates its integration into a sensor-based dosing system (SBDS).

MATERIALS AND METHODS: In collaboration with two movement disorder experts a knowledge-driven, simulation based algorithm was designed and integrated into a SBDS. The SBDS uses data from wearable sensors to fit individual patient models, which are then used as input to the dosing algorithm. To access the feasibility of using the SBDS in clinical practice its performance was evaluated during a clinical experiment where dosing optimization of oral levodopa was explored. The supervising neurologist made dosing adjustments based on data from the Parkinson's KinetiGraph™ (PKG) that the patients wore for a week in a free living setting. The dosing suggestions of the SBDS were compared with the PKG-guided adjustments.

RESULTS: The SBDS maintenance and morning dosing suggestions had a Pearson's correlation of 0.80 and 0.95 (with mean relative errors of 21% and 12.5%), to the PKG-guided dosing adjustments. Paired t test indicated no statistical differences between the algorithmic suggestions and the clinician's adjustments.

CONCLUSION: This study shows that it is possible to use algorithmic sensor-based dosing adjustments to optimize treatment with oral medication for PD patients.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this retrospective study was to investigate if patients with PD, who are treated with levodopa-carbidopa intestinal gel (LCIG), clinically worsen during the afternoon hours and if so, to evaluate whether this occurs in all LCIG-treated patients or in a sub-group of patients.

METHODS: Three published studies were identified and included in the analysis. All studies provided individual response data assessed on the treatment response scale (TRS) and patients were treated with continuous LCIG. Ninety-eight patients from the three studies fulfilled the criteria. T-tests were performed to find differences on the TRS values between the morning and the afternoon hours, linear mixed effect models were fitted on the afternoon hours' evaluations to find trends of wearing-off, and patients were classified into three TRS categories (meaningful increase in TRS, meaningful decrease in TRS, non -meaningful increase or decrease).

RESULTS: In all three studies significant statistical differences were found between the morning TRS values and the afternoon TRS values (p-value <= 0.001 in all studies). The linear mixed effect models had significant negative coefficients for time in two studies, and 48 out of 98 patients (49%) showed a meaningful decrease of TRS during the afternoon hours.

CONCLUSION: The results from all studies were consistent, both in the proportion of patients in the three groups and the value of TRS decrease in the afternoon hours. Based on these findings there seems to be a group of patients with predictable "off" behavior in the later parts of the day. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

The goal of this study was to develop an algorithm that automatically quantifies motor states (off,on,dyskinesia) in Parkinson's disease (PD), based on accelerometry during a hand pronation-supination test. Clinician's ratings using the Treatment Response Scale (TRS), ranging from -3 (very Off) to 0 (On) to +3 (very dyskinetic), was used as target. For that purpose, 19 participants with advanced PD and 22 healthy persons were recruited in a single center open label clinical trial in Uppsala, Sweden. The trial consisted of single levodopa dose experiments for the people with PD (PwP), where participants were asked to perform standardized wrist rotation tests, using each hand, before and at pre-specified time points after the dose. The participants used wrist sensors containing a 3D accelerometer and gyroscope. Features to quantify the level, variation and asymmetry of the sensor signals, three-level Discrete Wavelet Transform features and approximate entropy measures were extracted from the sensors data. At the time of the tests, the PwP were video recorded. Three movement disorder specialists rated the participants’ state on the TRS scale. A Treatment Response Index from Sensors (TRIS) was constructed to quantify the motor states based on the wrist rotation tests. Different machine learning algorithms were evaluated to map the features derived from the sensor data to the ratings provided by the three specialists. Results from cross validation, both in 10-fold and a leave-one-individual out setting, showed good predictive power of a support vector machine model and high correlation to the TRS scale. Values at the end tails of the TRS scale were under and over predicted due to the lack of observations at those values but the model managed to accurately capture the dose - effect profiles of the patients. In addition, the TRIS had good test-retest reliability on the baseline levels of the PD participants (Intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.83) and reasonable sensitivity to levodopa treatment (0.33 for the TRIS). For a series of test occasions the proposed algorithms provided dose - effect time profiles for participants with PD, which could be useful during therapy individualization of people suffering from advanced PD

Background and Objective

To achieve optimal effect with continuous infusion treatment in Parkinson’s disease (PD), the individual doses (morning dose and continuous infusion rate) are titrated by trained medical personnel. This study describes an algorithmic method to derive optimized dosing suggestions for infusion treatment of PD, by fitting individual dose-response models. The feasibility of the proposed method was investigated using patient chart data.

Methods

Patient records were collected at Uppsala University hospital which provided dosing information and dose-response evaluations. Mathematical optimization was used to fit individual patient models using the records’ information, by minimizing an objective function. The individual models were passed to a dose optimization algorithm, which derived an optimized dosing suggestion for each patient model.

Results

Using data from a single day’s admission the algorithm showed great ability to fit appropriate individual patient models and derive optimized doses. The infusion rate dosing suggestions had 0.88 correlation and 10% absolute mean relative error compared to the optimal doses as determined by the hospital’s treating team. The morning dose suggestions were consistency lower that the optimal morning doses, which could be attributed to different dosing strategies and/or lack of on-off evaluations in the morning.

Conclusion

The proposed method showed promise and could be applied in clinical practice, to provide the hospital personnel with additional information when making dose adjustment decisions.

Aim

This 4‐week open‐label observational study describes the effect of introducing a microtablet dose dispenser and adjusting doses based on objective free‐living motor symptom monitoring in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD).

Methods

Twenty‐eight outpatients with PD on stable levodopa treatment with dose intervals of ≤4 hour had their daytime doses of levodopa replaced with levodopa/carbidopa microtablets, 5/1.25 mg (LC‐5) delivered from a dose dispenser device with programmable reminders. After 2 weeks, doses were adjusted based on ambulatory accelerometry and clinical monitoring.

Results

Twenty‐four participants completed the study per protocol. The daily levodopa dose was increased by 15% (112 mg, P < 0.001) from period 1 to 2, and the dose interval was reduced by 12% (22 minutes, P = 0.003). The treatment adherence to LC‐5 was high in both periods. The MDS‐UPDRS parts II and III, disease‐specific quality of life (PDQ‐8), wearing‐off symptoms (WOQ‐19), and nonmotor symptoms (NMS Quest) improved after dose titration, but the generic quality‐of‐life measure EQ‐5D‐5L did not. Blinded expert evaluation of accelerometry results demonstrated improvement in 60% of subjects and worsening in 25%.

Conclusions

The introduction of a levodopa microtablet dispenser and accelerometry aided dose adjustments improve PD symptoms and quality of life in the short term.

Poker playing and responsible gambling both entail the use of the executive functions (EF), which are higher-level cognitive abilities. This study investigated if online poker players of different ability showed different performances in their EF and if so, which functions were the most discriminating for their playing ability. Furthermore, it assessed if the EF performance was correlated to the quality of gambling, according to self-reported questionnaires (PGSI, SOGS, GRCS). Three poker experts evaluated anonymized poker hand history files and, then, a trained professional administered an extensive neuropsychological test battery. Data analysis determined which variables of the tests correlated with poker ability and gambling quality scores. The highest correlations between EF test results and poker ability and between EF test results and gambling quality assessment showed that mostly different clusters of executive functions characterize the profile of the strong(er) poker player and those ones of the problem gamblers (PGSI and SOGS) and the one of the cognitions related to gambling (GRCS). Taking into consideration only the variables overlapping between PGSI and SOGS, we found some key predictive factors for a more risky and harmful online poker playing: a lower performance in the emotional intelligence competences (Emotional Quotient inventory Short) and, in particular, those grouped in the Intrapersonal scale (emotional self-awareness, assertiveness, self-regard, independence and self-actualization).