System and Method to Determine ME/CFS and Long COVID Disease Severity Using a Wearable Sensor

Dokumentdetails

ID

oai:arXiv.org:2404.04345

Thema

Quantitative Biology - Quantitativ... Computer Science - Computers and S... Statistics - Applications

Autor

Sun, Yifei Vernon, Suzanne D. Roundy, Shad

Kategorie

Computer Science

Jahr

2024

Auflistungsdatum

10.04.2024

Schlüsselwörter

measure healthy steps/day controls subjects objective disease severity covid 0 $\mathbf{p

Metrisch

Zusammenfassung

Objective: We present a simple parameter, calculated from a single wearable sensor, that can be used to objectively measure disease severity in people with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) or Long COVID.

We call this parameter UpTime.

Methods: Prior research has shown that the amount of time a person spends upright, defined as lower legs vertical with feet on the floor, correlates strongly with ME/CFS disease severity.

We use a single commercial inertial measurement unit (IMU) attached to the ankle to calculate the percentage of time each day that a person spends upright (i.e., UpTime) and number of Steps/Day.

As Long COVID shares symptoms with ME/CFS, we also apply this method to determine Long COVID disease severity.

We performed a trial with 55 subjects broken into three cohorts, healthy controls, ME/CFS, and Long COVID.

Subjects wore the IMU on their ankle for a period of 7 days.

UpTime and Steps/Day were calculated each day and results compared between cohorts.

Results: UpTime effectively distinguishes between healthy controls and subjects diagnosed with ME/CFS ($\mathbf{p = 0.00004}$) and between healthy controls and subjects diagnosed with Long COVID ($\mathbf{p = 0.01185}$).

Steps/Day did distinguish between controls and subjects with ME/CFS ($\mathbf{p = 0.01}$) but did not distinguish between controls and subjects with Long COVID ($\mathbf{p = 0.3}$).

Conclusion: UpTime is an objective measure of ME/CFS and Long COVID severity.

UpTime can be used as an objective outcome measure in clinical research and treatment trials.

Significance: Objective assessment of ME/CFS and Long COVID disease severity using UpTime could spur development of treatments by enabling the effect of those treatments to be easily measured.

Sun, Yifei,Vernon, Suzanne D.,Roundy, Shad, 2024, System and Method to Determine ME/CFS and Long COVID Disease Severity Using a Wearable Sensor