Researchers Develop New Tools to Detect Parkinson’s Disease Earlier

Neurologist David Standaert at the University of Alabama at Birmingham says he can often identify Parkinson’s disease within minutes by observing tremors, reduced arm swing, softer voice, and limited facial expression. Standaert states that more than 1 million people in the United States have the disease and that fewer than 1,000 movement disorder specialists are available to diagnose them.

He notes that the number of cases is rising as the population ages.

Standaert explains that Parkinson’s varies widely between patients, with differences in symptom onset, severity, and progression rate. He says no two patients present identically. Diagnosis currently relies on movement-related symptoms and, in uncertain cases, a DaTscan imaging test that costs about $3,000 and takes several hours.

Chen at the University of California, Los Angeles, has developed a soft ball that measures hand tremors through magnetoelastic signals when squeezed. Chen’s team reported in February that the device detects pressures below one kilopascal. Chen has also created a pen that records tremors during writing and an intelligent keyboard that tracks typing pressure patterns.

He says daily use of the keyboard could flag changes that indicate early disease. Stanford movement disorder specialist Kathleen Poston says dozens of drugs targeting the underlying causes of Parkinson’s are now in clinical trials. She states that these treatments differ from current symptom-management options.