Objective: Our goal was to evaluate the validity and reproducibility of a novel metric, neuroQWERTY index (nQi), to characterize PD’s motor component.

Background: The motor component of Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a key part of its diagnosis and management. Existing assessment methods lack the ability to provide quantitative information about the ambulatory evolution of motor symptoms, which would be valuable in different scenarios (e.g. drug trials and at-risk population screening). Such ability could be achieved, in a pervasive and effortless way, by exploiting temporal information captured during daily interaction with electronic devices.

Methods: We performed test and re-test evaluations on PD and healthy subjects. PD patients interrupted all dopaminergic agents 18-hours before the tests to complete an “off“ examination. Then, they were examined 60-minute after an acute L-Dopa challenge in “on“. Blinded Unified Parkinson’s disease Rating Scale motor assessments (UPDRS-III) and finger-tapping tasks were used as references. nQi was derived from subjects’ key-press dynamics while typing a random text on a laptop.

Results: The nQi classified accurately PD (N=21) vs. controls (N=15) with an area under the ROC curve of 0.88. An UPDRS-III motor change ≥ 2.5 points was induced in 8 PD participants and none of the controls. The index was not accurate to detect this intra-subject change. Nonetheless, a weak to strong significant correlation (P <0.05) was observed with the reference standards. nQi was reproducible.

Conclusions: The results of our study suggest that conventional everyday-use electronic devices can be useful to obtain meaningful motor information related with PD.

This work was presented at the LXVII Meeting of the Spanish Neurological Society. This meeting was held in Valencia, Spain, on November 20, 2015. The abstract number is 2015/1 (id: 6774).

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/evaluating-parkinsonian-motor-features-via-the-routine-use-of-consumer-electronics-neuroqwerty/