Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
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s who danced onger dance, hat walked are denied that and the family trapped in this oing slower and ng able to do h.” property, originally a farmhouse built in the early 19th century but swallowed up by IBM’S research campus in Yorktown Heights, is now a focal point of the campaign to turn the tide on Parkinson’s.
Research has established that Parkinson’s patients suffer changes to their gait and movement. The Bluesky team believe the results from observing ‘wired’ patients as they go about their daily routines will lead to earlier diagnosis, and better and faster clinical trials for new drugs. Crucially, it could provide the opportunity for prolonged independence delivered by home monitors which will predict when medication is wearing off and when patients might become more susceptible to falls.
The project, which has been testing for The condition was first characterised by English welfare campaigner and doctor James Parkinson in 1817 with his paper, An Essay On The Shaking Palsy.
Its genetic causes have been difficult to decode and it is believed that environmental issues also play a part. The actor Michael J Fox, who was diagnosed with the condition aged
31 and went on to establish a research foundation, says: “Genetics loads the gun and the environment pulls the trigger.”
Evidence has been advanced that toxic chemicals, heavy metals, viruses and bacteria have an influence.
Research has, until recently, been unable to pinpoint the causes other than a lack of the signalling chemical dopamine being produced in the brain. “There have been huge gains on so many levels and one of the exciting things is that we have disease-modifying drugs in the pipeline that could stop symptoms and progression,” says
Rachel Dolhun, a movement disorder specialist with the Michael J Fox Foundation.
“We are in a new era where genetics is leading us towards targeted treatments, and technology is providing increased data collection and knowledge. We have so much reason to hope right now.”
The charity Parkinson’s UK is a leading force in global research and recently invested £1.2m into potential treatments to slow disease progression.
18 months, fuses artificial intelligence and real-time collection of patient data to provide a round-the-clock window on disease symptoms.
Diagnosing and monitoring Parkinson’s in current clinical settings is difficult and relies on a series of often crude tests, such as walking up and down a hospital corridor and being asked to touch your nose with a fingertip to check for changes in a range of physical functions. These are subjective and notoriously problematic to assess as the disease varies between patients and between their doctor’s appointments.
“One of the issues we have with Parkinson’s is that we cannot monitor the progression accurately which means we cannot test new drugs very effectively,” says Dr Beckie Port, of Parkinson’s UK. “Clinical trials could have failed in the past not because the drugs haven’t worked but because we are unable to test them effectively in Parkinson’s.”
A decade of research into the genetic causes of Parkinson’s has led to a promising pipeline of new drugs, aimed at controlling chemical signalling in the brain, and the re-purposing of existing drugs to fight the condition.
Dr Port adds: “We are in a strong position to develop better drugs in the future and we need to get them faster with improved clinical trials.
“Technology could help with early diagnosis and allow digital health to provide monitoring, enabling people to stay at home for as long as possible, and allow carers and family members to know their loved ones are safe.”