Technological evaluation of strategies to get out of bed by people with Parkinson's disease: Insights from multisite wearable sensors.

Background: Difficulty getting out of bed is a common night-time and early morning manifestation of Parkinson's disease (PD), rated by 40% of the patients as their most concerning motor symptoms. However, current assessment methods are based on clinical interviews, video analysis, and clinical scales as objective outcome measures are not yet available.

Objective: To study the technical feasibility of multisite wearable sensors in the assessment of the supine-to-stand (STS) task as a determinant of the ability to get out of bed in patients with PD and age-matched control subjects, and develop relevant objective outcome measures.

Methods: The STS task was assessed in 32 patients with PD (mean Hoehn and Yahr; HY = 2.5) in the early morning before their first dopaminergic medication, and in 14 control subjects, using multisite wearable sensors (NIGHT-Recorder®; trunk, both wrists, and both ankles) in a sleep laboratory. Objective getting out of bed parameters included duration, onset, velocity and acceleration of truncal rotation, and angle deviation (a°) from the z-axis when subjects rose from the bed at different angles from the x-axis (10°, 15°, 30°, 45°, and 60°) as measures of truncal lateral flexion. Movement patterns were identified from the first body part or parts that moved. Correlation analysis was performed between these objective outcomes and standard clinical rating scales.

Results: Compared to control subjects, the duration of STS was significantly longer in patients with PD (p = 0.012), which is associated with a significantly slower velocity of truncal rotation (p = 0.003). Moderate and significant correlations were observed between the mean STS duration and age, and the Nocturnal Hypokinesia Questionnaire. The velocity of truncal rotation negatively and significantly correlated with HY staging. Any arm and leg moved together as the first movement significantly correlated with UPDRS-Axial and item #28. Several other correlations were also observed.

Conclusion: Our study was able to demonstrate the technical feasibility of using multisite wearable sensors to quantitatively assess early objective outcome measures of the ability of patients with PD to get out of bed, which significantly correlated with axial severity scores, suggesting that axial impairment could be a contributing factor in difficulty getting out of bed. Future studies are needed to refine these outcome measures for use in therapeutic trials related to nocturia or early morning akinesia in PD.