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QuantifiedSelf Paris May 22, 2012

Quantifying Your Parkinson’s

with a Wii

Parkinson’s Disease

A brief introduction

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What is Parkinson’s Disease?

Neurological degeneration of substantia nigra’s cells

Cells producing dopamine

Disease characterized by tremors, bradykinesia (slowness),

rigidity

Looking for biomarkers – PPMI Michael J Fox Foundation’s initiative

DatScan measures?

Cerebral Spinal Fluid analysis?

Blood levels?

Diagnostic is currently only clinical (observation)

DaTScan can spot dopaminergic deficits and help differentiate with other

disorders but is not an official base for a diagnostic

Only evaluation by a neurologist is recognized for diagnosis

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Causes of Parkinson’s

We don’t know!

But we know that

Dopamine producing cells in the Substantia Nigra (SN) degenerate

Basal ganglia cells do not receive enough dopamine and can’t perform their complex job for motor, and mood, processing loops

Motor alterations of movements is more and more pronounced, “potentially” until a bed-ridden stage

“Usually” leading to a constant degradation in Quality of Life

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Compensate the loss of dopamine by supplying more levodopa,

a precursor that is transformed in dopamine

by the Substantia Nigra cells

Though, we can’t monitor directly the number of SN cells

We could see, thanks to a heavy procedure (DaTScan),

the uptake of dopamine in basal ganglia improving

But mainly, we can see the improvement in motor condition

Which is the basis for an official diagnosis

What’s the treatment?

Exercise is also shown to be important (as potent as dopamine agonists,

another drug class)

“Use it or loose it” situation

Probably improves uptake of dopamine

Put neuroplasticity in motion

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The situation is Motor symptoms are the only easily

observable impact of the disease

Depression is difficult to evaluate, and can be made worse by motor problems

Every Parkinson’s patient is different

Mechanisms are extremely complex and idiopathies probably very different

Symptoms vary greatly among patients

Levodopa has a short plasma half-life cycle (1 hour)

Should be taken several times a day

Proper doses throughout the day and adherence to schedule are critical

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Why the Wii (or the Kinect, or the

iPhone,..) can help?

Helps you exercising

Monitors your movements

Provides measures or indexes that you can track (e.g. Wii-Fit age)

Several studies are built on using the Wii to create physical exercises, and monitor their impact

Wii has been an early (objective) indicator for a UK lady prior to her diagnosis

Wii could serve to quantify objective measures among a large set of patients, and control group

Sara Riggare

A woman with Parkinson’s Disease. Not patient but im-patient

2012 Sara Riggare – http://twitter.com/SaraRiggare

CC BY-NC-ND 2012 Sara Riggare – http://twitter.com/SaraRiggare CC BY-NC-ND

2012 Sara Riggare – http://twitter.com/SaraRiggare

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2012 Sara Riggare – http://twitter.com/SaraRiggare

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2012 Sara Riggare – http://twitter.com/SaraRiggare

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2012 Sara Riggare – http://twitter.com/SaraRiggare

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2012 Sara Riggare – http://twitter.com/SaraRiggare

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2012 Sara Riggare – http://twitter.com/SaraRiggare

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2012 Sara Riggare – http://twitter.com/SaraRiggare

CC BY-NC-ND 2012 Sara Riggare – http://twitter.com/SaraRiggare CC BY-NC-ND

When crowdfunding meets

quantified-self

Clinical trials that patients consider important, at fractions of the

cost

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Using un-expensive material to monitor patient and control groups

Opening the scope of hypotheses to be quickly tested

Exercise, dietary regimens

Existence of sub-types for the disease

Big Data coming to medical research

23AndMe gathered genetic material from 6500+ people with Parkinson’s, leading to new correlations between certain genes and the disease

We could create a database of daily-living measures for symptoms and impact of drugs (are there compounds slowing down progression?)

Crowdfunding clinical trials

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If you’re interested in a crowdfunding

challenge for quantified-self trials

Let’s emulate #SciFund Challenge success. If you’re interested in

seeing a similar Challenge for #quantifiedself #medicaltrials:

Show this presentation around

Contact me at fbaud@p2pventure.org