Continuous quantitative monitoring of physical activity in Parkinson’s disease patients by using wearable devices: a case-control study

The objective of this study was to explore the feasibility of using wearable devices to quantitatively measure the daily activity in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and to monitor medication-induced motor fluctuations. In this case-controlled study, we used monitored daily movement function in 21 patients with Parkinson’s disease and 20 healthy volunteers. We analyzed the exercise types and sleep duration in the two groups and evaluated the correlation between daily movement function and age, gender, education, disease duration, Hohn-Yahr stage, UPDRS-II score, UPDRS-III score, and levodopa dose. We also determined the amount of exercise performed by PD patients at 1 h after taking levodopa and at 1 h before the next dose. The type of activity, average speed, and sleep duration in patients were significantly lower in PD patients than in healthy controls (P < 0.05). One hour after taking levodopa, patients were significantly more active than 1 h before the next dose (P < 0.05).Correlation analysis showed that age, gender, education, disease duration, Hohn-Yahr stage, UPDRS-II and UPDRS-III scores, and dosage of levodopa do not correlate with the daily movement function (P > 0.05) in patients with Parkinson’s disease. In the control group, age and education were associated with daily movement function (P < 0.05), while gender was unrelated (P > 0.05). Continuous monitoring of daily activity may be useful to reveal medication-induced motor fluctuations in Parkinson’s disease. The daily movement function may depend on age and education, but not on other parameters.