Study demonstrates the use of a wearable device in treatment of Parkinson’s disease resulted in significant improvement in patient outcomes compared to standard of care management
December 3, 2020 – The Florey Institute and Global Kinetics Pty Ltd. today announced that data from a new clinical study of the FDA-cleared wearable Personal KinetiGraph® (PKG®) has been published in the Nature Partners Journal – Parkinson’s Disease.
The study entitled “A controlled trial of objective measurement to guide therapy improves outcomes in Parkinson’s disease” adds to the body of evidence showing the advantages of using a wearable, continuous objective measurement system in the monitoring and management of motor symptoms affecting people with Parkinson’s disease (PD).
This controlled study compared the outcomes of routine clinical management to clinical management aided by the PKG in 200 participants. Individuals whose management was aided by the PKG underwent medication adjustments with the aim of getting them into an objective PKG-based ‘target range’. In the control arm, optimization of therapy was judged using usual clinical practice. The Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS), a common measurement of PD outcomes, was used as the primary endpoint of the study. The PKG treatment arm had a significant improvement of 8.5 points (p=0.001) on the UPDRS at the last visit compared to their baseline, and the group managed with the aid of PKG improved by 6.3 points (p=0.02) more than the standard of care arm.
Other measures of how patients experience PD symptoms improved in the treatment group where clinicians had access to objective data in the PKG. These measures include the UPDRS III which is the motor component of the UPDRS rating scale, the PDQ-39 which is a patient-reported survey of how often people affected by PD experience difficulties across 8 dimensions of daily living including relationships, social situations and communication and the Severity of Non-dopaminergic Symptoms in Parkinson’s Disease (SENS-PD) scale measuring non-motor symptoms in PD.
| Treatment
(Mean ± StD) |
Standard of Care
(Mean ± StD) |
P-value | |
| UPDRS III | 28.6± 8.0 | 33.2 ±10.0 | 0.002 |
| PDQ-39 | 22.2± 13.6 | 25.6 ±18.8 | 0.21 |
| SENS PD | 9.9 ±4.6 | 11.4± 4.9 | 0.055 |
Professor Malcolm Horne, Movement Disorder Specialist and an author on the study report, said, “This study provides evidence that objective measurement and targets can improve clinical outcomes for people with Parkinson’s disease. Many clinicians around the world use the PKG to guide their treatment of Parkinson’s. Introducing PKG targets may, in time, enable other clinicians and nurses to treat people with Parkinson’s disease through the lens of objective measurement.”
Mark Frasier, PhD, Senior Vice President of Research Programs at The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF), which funded part of the study, added, “These findings further confirm the need for objective measures of Parkinson’s to more optimally manage symptoms and to evaluate disease and the impact of interventions in research studies. These results could also serve development of an enhanced care model, where continuous symptom monitoring could enable more efficient and tailored treatments.”
The study was supported by grants from MJFF, Shake it Up Australia Foundation and Parkinson’s Victoria, and an in-kind grant from GKC.
About Global Kinetics Pty Ltd.
Global Kinetics Pty Ltd. is committed to improving the lives of those with Parkinson’s disease with advanced medical technologies. The company was formed in 2007 to commercialize its lead product, the Personal KinetiGraph (PKG). The PKG enables the precise monitoring, quantification, and reporting of movement symptoms in Parkinson’s. To date, Global Kinetics has supported clinical decisions for doctors who have treated more than 30,000 patients with Parkinson’s disease, generating more than 7,200,000 hours of clinical data from the FDA-cleared, CE-marked PKG wearable device. Global Kinetics is a privately held company, headquartered in Melbourne, Australia with offices in London, UK, and Minneapolis, MN.
For more information, visit: www.globalkineticscorporation.com
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