Circular success

Parkinson’s diagnosis tool

A PENCIL and paper may be all that is needed to diagnose Parkinson’s disease before physical symptoms appear, Australian scientists say.

Biomedical engineers at RMIT have developed a “breakthrough” diagnostic tool that records how someone draws a spiral and then analyses the data in real time.

The software is said to have a 93 per cent accuracy rate, offering hope it could one day be used as a standard screening test to spot the condition in its earliest stages.

“Pushing back the point at which treatment can start is critical because we know that by the time someone starts to experience tremors or rigidity, it may already be too late,” chief investigator Professor Dinesh Kumar said.

“We’ve long known that Parkinson’s disease affects the writing and sketching abilities of patients, but efforts to trans- late that insight into a reliable assessment method have failed — until now,” Prof Kumar said.

Because there are no current lab tests, a confirmed diagnosis of Parkinson’s often occurs after nerve cells in the brain have already been irreversibly damaged.

An estimated 80,000 Australians are living with Parkinson’s disease, making it the second most common neurological disease in Australia after dementia. It’s a disease that can strike the young, with about 30 per cent diagnosed by the age of 50.

A study, published in journal Frontiers in Neurology, tested the tool on 62 people diagnosed with Parkinson’s — of which half had no visible symptoms and half ranged from mildly to severely affected.

“We’re hopeful that doctors or nurses could use our technology to regularly screen their patients for Parkinson’s,” Prof Kumar said.