Subtle clues in how someone types on a keyboard may be able to reveal early signs of 笔补谤办颈苍蝉辞苍鈥檚. The hope is that this could be used to spot the disease before pronounced hand tremors or serious changes in the brain have occurred.
To test the approach, hundreds of volunteers that monitored their typing over 9 months. Warwick Adams at Charles Sturt University in Australia, who has 笔补谤办颈苍蝉辞苍鈥檚 himself, then whittled the sample down to 76 individuals who were of the appropriate age, not taking medication, and who had mild disease severity only.
Adams鈥� idea was to see if the times between key presses could be accurately plotted against a sine wave of 4-6 Hz 鈥� the frequency of 笔补谤办颈苍蝉辞苍鈥檚 hand tremors. If these data points didn鈥檛 map well to such a curve, that would be an indication that no tremor was present.
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Using this technique, the system was able to correctly identify patients who had mild 笔补谤办颈苍蝉辞苍鈥檚 disease tremor with 78 per cent accuracy.
鈥淭he end-game is to develop a widely-available screening test for both GP鈥檚 and individuals,鈥� says Adams, who has 笔补谤办颈苍蝉辞苍鈥檚, but not tremors.
Early detection would in theory allow doctors to prescribe treatments that can inhibit the progression of the disease. Not all people with 笔补谤办颈苍蝉辞苍鈥檚 develop hand tremors, but about three quarters do.
Previously, Adams developed a separate tool that can detect early 笔补谤办颈苍蝉辞苍鈥檚 disease by spotting something different 鈥� changes in the . He thinks that combining the two methods is a key step towards building a diagnostic tool of clinical standards.
Adams isn鈥檛 the only one working on such technology. 脕lvaro S谩nchez Ferro at the HM CINAC neuroscience research centre in Spain and colleagues also found that typing patterns could be indicative of 笔补谤办颈苍蝉辞苍鈥檚. Their system is now in the process of being commercialised.
One difficulty the system will face is that mild tremors mostly appear when resting and become less pronounced when someone begin to use their hands for a task like typing, says Ferro.
Adams adds that he sometimes gets asked whether researching a disease he has himself is a good idea, but he points out that his 笔补谤办颈苍蝉辞苍鈥檚 was diagnosed some time ago, meaning any benefits of early detection would not be available to him anyway. 鈥淚 think it would be a different situation if I was evaluating drugs or treatments,鈥� he says.
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