Methods and demographic findings of the baseline survey of the NEDICES cohort: a door-to-door survey of neurological disorders in three communities from Central Spain

El estudio NEDICES de cohorte poblacional de ancianos analiza los desórdenes neurológicos en tres comunidades del Centro de España.To describe the methods and general results of the baseline longitudinal survey in a defined cohort of elderly people from three areas of Central Spain (urban and rural). The survey was designed to study dementia, essential tremor, Parkinson s disease and stroke

Validación de un protoclo clínico para la detección de demencia en el ámbito poblacional

Validación de un protocolo clínico para la detección de demencia en ámbito poblacionalTo analyse the validity of a set of neuropsychological and functional tests, and to study their value in detectingand diagnosing dementia through a pilot study. Patients and methods. A total of 131 subjects (101 controls and 30 withdementia) were evaluated using a comprehensive neuropsychological and functional battery. Validity analyses were conducted using ROC curves in accordance with the definitions of diagnostic test validation. Finally, a discriminant analysis wasperformed with the tests that showed greater diagnostic validity in the study of the ROC curves. Results. The case and control groups were not significantly different as regards age, sex and level of schooling. The ROC curves analyses showed the following to be the tests with the highest diagnostic validity: the MMSE, delayed recall of a short story, delayed recall of six pictures, the Spanish version of the S-IQCODE (shortened) and Pfeffer s FAQ. The discriminant analysis evidenced the fact that the joint utilisation of all the foregoing tests, except delayed recall of six pictures, classified 96.55% of our sample correctly. Conclusions. By combining direct cognitive evaluation of the subject and functional performance evaluated by a trustworthy informer, the vast majority of participants in the pilot study were correctly classified into patients with and without dementia. The high diagnostic validity of four relatively short tests lends support to their use in broader clinical or population studie

Detection of motor impairment in Parkinson's disease via mobile touchscreen typing

Mobile technology is opening a wide range of opportunities for transforming the standard of care for chronic disorders. Using smartphones as tools for longitudinally tracking symptoms could enable personalization of drug regimens and improve patient monitoring. Parkinson's disease (PD) is an ideal candidate for these tools. At present, evaluation of PD signs requires trained experts to quantify motor impairment in the clinic, limiting the frequency and quality of the information available for understanding the status and progression of the disease. Mobile technology can help clinical decision making by completing the information of motor status between hospital visits. This paper presents an algorithm to detect PD by analyzing the typing activity on smartphones independently of the content of the typed text. We propose a set of touchscreen typing features based on a covariance, skewness, and kurtosis analysis of the timing information of the data to capture PD motor signs. We tested these features, both independently and in a multivariate framework, in a population of 21 PD and 23 control subjects, achieving a sensitivity/specificity of 0.81/0.81 for the best performing feature and 0.73/0.84 for the best multivariate method. The results of the alternating finger-tapping, an established motor test, measured in our cohort are 0.75/0.78. This paper contributes to the development of a home-based, high-compliance, and high-frequency PD motor test by analysis of routine typing on touchscreens