Fitness watches and smartphones could improve MS treatment
Published: Wednesday, Apr 17th 2024, 10:50
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Data from fitness watches and smartphones could improve the treatment of multiple sclerosis. According to a new study led by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich), they provide a good picture of the course of the disease, as the university announced on Wednesday.
In patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), the immune system attacks the nerve fibers. The symptoms and course of the disease can vary greatly from patient to patient. They range from fatigue and visual disturbances to paralysis.
In order to choose a suitable therapy, doctors need to know as much as possible about the symptoms. They usually obtain this information by questioning patients, who are not always able to remember exactly how they have been feeling over the past weeks and months. According to ETH Zurich, the data collected in this way is therefore often inaccurate and incomplete.
In their study, which was published in the journal "NPJ Digital Medicine", the ETH researchers led by Christian Holz and Gunnar Rätsch have now shown that smartphones and sports watches can reliably provide such data. They demonstrated it on 79 people with and without MS who were equipped with fitness watches for the study.
Better treatment
Data on physical activity and heart rate proved to be particularly meaningful, as the ETH wrote: the lower the physical activity and heart rate, the more impaired and tired the study participants were. "Doctors would benefit from having access to reliable long-term measurements of their patients' health parameters. These data provide an accurate and comprehensive picture of the patient's condition," said first author Shkurta Gashi in the press release.
According to the researchers, such data could improve the quality of treatment. It could also be used to test the effectiveness of therapies. However, further studies are needed to develop reliable models for automatic data evaluation.
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