Global Kinetics Corporation (GKC), a leader in digital health technology for people with Parkinson’s disease (PD), has developed a dataset of more than 10,000 reports of symptoms from patients with PD.
The company said the database was used to analyse symptomology from patients across the globe and presented in a poster at the recent International Congress of Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders.
The analysis of data from 10,000 de-identified Parkinson’s KinetiGraph (PKG) reports, called Personal KinetiGraph in the US, generated across four geographies including the US, Europe, Australia and Asia between January 2012 and January 2017, showed significant regional variation in PD motor symptoms.
The company said this may be due, in part, to differences in the availability of treatment options and variations in clinical practice.
The analysis also highlighted a meaningful proportion of patients in every region experience suboptimal control of their PD symptoms, including bradykinesia, dyskinesia, fluctuations, tremor, and immobility. Uncontrolled symptomology in PD has been associated with increased healthcare costs and reduce patient quality of life.
“This exploratory study shows the power of continuous objective measurement in PD and how a rich dataset like this could be used to identify and target unmet needs and thereby enhance healthcare benchmarking in the disease,” said Peter Lynch, head of global market access, reimbursement and health economics for GKC and the presenting author of the study. “Up until now, we believe that a collection of truly objective Parkinson’s patient symptoms like this has not existed, and we believe it may offer a rich resource for researchers to understand the disease more deeply.”
The company said use of continuous objective measurement in routine clinical care of PD enables the identification and quantification of motor symptoms and allows clinicians to assess and track patient’s symptoms over time.
Treating PD presents challenges as patients’ symptoms can fluctuate from day to day and even throughout the course of a day. People with PD rely heavily on their own interpretation of their symptoms, as well as evaluation from their doctors to understand how their disease is progressing and act to optimize their medication regimens. The PKG provides a measure of patients’ symptoms, allowing physicians to objectively assess symptoms and help make decisions about when to alter treatment.
"Even though literature suggests that more than 75 percent of PD patients develop motor fluctuations, no one knows how large the need for dose adjustments or advanced treatments really is,” said Filip Bergquist, associate professor in the department of neurology at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Sweden and a co-author on the poster. “This descriptive study indicates that there is substantial room for improvement, and it should be followed by population based studies as well as evaluations of whether the availability of objective measurements will improve outcomes."