Parkinson's Kinetigraph for Wearable Sensor Detection of Clinically Unrecognized Early-Morning Akinesia in Parkinson's Disease: A Case Report-Based Observation

• Published in: Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 24; no. 10; p. 3045
• Main Authors: Poplawska-Domaszewicz, Karolina, Limbachiya, Naomi, Lau, Yue Hui, Chaudhuri, Kallol Ray
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 11.05.2024
• Subjects: Aged; Akinesia; Care and treatment; Diseases; Dyskinesia; Dystonia; early-morning akinesia; early-morning off; Female; Humans; Levodopa - therapeutic use; Male; Middle Aged; Parkinson Disease - diagnosis; Parkinson Disease - drug therapy; Parkinson Disease - physiopathology; Parkinson’s disease; Patient assessment; PKG; Sensors; Sleep; Tremor (Muscular contraction); Wearable Electronic Devices; early-morning off; PKG; Parkinson’s disease; early-morning akinesia
• ISSN: 1424-8220; 1424-8220
• DOI: 10.3390/s24103045

Early-morning off periods, causing early-morning akinesia, can lead to significant motor and nonmotor morbidity in levodopa-treated fluctuating Parkinson's disease (PD) cases. Despite validated bedside scales in clinical practice, such early-morning off periods may remain undetected unless specific wearable technologies, such as the Parkinson's KinetiGraph™ (PKG) watch, are used. We report five PD cases for whom the PKG detected early-morning off periods that were initially clinically undetected and as such, untreated. These five cases serve as exemplars of this clinical gap in care. Post-PKG assessment, clinicians were alerted and targeted therapies helped abolish the early-morning off periods.