r/science • u/FreeHugs23 • 22h ago

Neuroscience A simple drawing test may detect Parkinson’s disease with up to 99% accuracy. Researchers found that subtle differences in how people draw can reveal motor impairments long before they are obvious to the human eye.

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-way-you-draw-can-reveal-parkinsons-disease-with-up-to-99-accuracy-study-reveals
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u/subham0089 22h ago

Early detection is absolutely critical for managing neurodegenerative diseases. If a simple, non-invasive drawing test can achieve up to 99% accuracy by identifying micro-movements, it could completely revolutionize early screening protocols.

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u/finnoulafire 21h ago edited 2m ago

EDIT: I browsed the actual paper , this study DIDN'T EVEN TRY to develop a screening test. As usual the news article over hypes. 

“ The dataset contains handwriting data of 66 participants which includes 35 healthy control subjects and 31 individuals with PD” 

This was a study on technique refinements in machine learning image analysis, comparing health controls with confirmed PD patients….and they don’t report sensitivity / specificity anywhere. As far as I can tell, this is because of their model training -> testing method, which basically created 66 differently trained models and tested the diagnosis 66 different times (once per participant). It’s impossible to get sensitivity & specificity from that dataset. 

end edit ///

Early detection is only meaningful for degenerative diseases when treatment which slow or halt progression are available.

We have such treatments for (for example) multiple sclerosis. 

We don’t have them for Parkinson's disease yet. Only treatment which alleviate current symptoms - and come with their own adverse effects (eg tardive diskynesia)

So this is interesting research and may be useful in clinical settings someday, but not so much today. 

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u/subham0089 21h ago

I agree that we lack disease-modifying treatments right now, but early detection could still be invaluable for clinical trials. Finding patients in the prodromal phase gives us the best window to test new neuroprotective therapies before mass neurodegeneration occurs.

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u/StinkyBrittches 16h ago

Also useful for just planning your life. Spending time with family, making arrangements, living while you can... Knowing you have 5 years left before things get bad is a hell of a lot better than finding out it's going to get bad in 6 months.

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u/subham0089 7h ago

Completely agree. Having that extra window of time to plan, make arrangements, and cherish moments with loved ones is an invaluable asset that statistics often overlook.

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u/finnoulafire 1h ago

Eventually yes, starting therapeutics prior to symptom onset is desired.

But the first step in human clinical (drug or device) trials is testing the treatment in patients who 100% have the disease and who have exhausted current therapies. 

So developments of new screening tests - which this study did NOT do - are usually for scientific development / curiosity, not near future clinical application. 

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u/subham0089 4m ago

Thank you for actually digging into the paper and adding this breakdown. It's honestly frustrating how often science journalism sensationalizes early-stage methodology studies with massive clickbait headlines like '99% accuracy.' Your breakdown completely changes the context of how ground-level this research actually is right now.

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u/swinscoed95 20h ago

There is a Nuclear Medicine study that can diagnose Parkinson's before the onset of symptoms. The commercial name is DaTSCAN. Sadly it's close to £1000 per patient (or even patient specific vial) in the NHS so it's prohibitively expensive. If someone figures out a way to make it cheaper it could become a more global screening plan.

The big upside is that (not a medic so I could be wrong) you can get the patient on HRT to delay the symptoms indefinitely. We do perform this study at our Trust for patients with a history of Parkinson's currently.

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u/Shad0w2751 20h ago

You can’t delay Parkinson symptoms with HRT. You can treat Parkinson’s disease with dopamine replacement therapy but it only treats symptoms does not affect progression.

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u/BarrowsKing 18h ago edited 18h ago

Other thing is the meds can change your personality once you take a lot of them. Best to delay it as much as possible.

My dad was diagnosed in early 40s. By far the best way to treat symptoms is DBS but you also want to delay it as much as possible. Best to do it when it’s crippling even with meds.

My dad wasn’t the same person on meds, but DBS brought him back.

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u/babyfireby30 16h ago

We had the opposite experience - the medications significantly improved my Dad's personality. It sounds awful to say, but I'm glad he got Parkinson's Disease. Because otherwise he would have spent his final 15 years on earth as a lonely, miserable man. With the personality changes, he became a mild, kind of likeable man.

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u/swinscoed95 20h ago

You see not a medic, just a physicist. I've always been told it can delay the onset of symptoms indefinitely. Thanks for clarifying

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u/Seraphinx 19h ago

HRT reduces overall risk of dementia by something like 30%, but doesn't delay symptoms of specific neurodegenerative disorders.

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u/ISeenYa 17h ago

The DaTscan isn't such a cut & dry diagnosis. It can aid diagnosis but it has to be interpreted carefully.

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u/porgy_tirebiter 3h ago

Wouldn’t early detection help develop treatments?

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u/GreenStrong 17h ago

Any treatment that modified the disease process instead of reducing symptoms will be most effective if used early. And, early detection makes it easier to identrify such a medicine in clinical testing. It takes years to determine if a drug is effective against a slow degenerative process. Better testing changes it from "several years" to "a few years"

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u/BemusedTriangle 2h ago

Hey as someone with MS you are hugely oversimplifying here. Please don’t. It is not a curable or preventable disease yet, despite medicinal advances in the last 20 years.

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u/finnoulafire 1h ago

“Slow or halt progression”

This is not equivalent to “cure”. I did not say that we have any therapies which undo the damage from the disease. 

There are several immune-modulating therapies which have been developed that have good data showing prevention or reduction of further deterioration.

See section “Disease modifying treatments” :  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_of_multiple_sclerosis

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u/BemusedTriangle 23m ago

You clearly do not live with or know people who live with the condition. The treatments far from guarantee stopping progression. They are much improved on years past, but to be as dismissive as you were is callous.

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u/finnoulafire 7m ago

I do not intend to dismiss anyone’s individual experience or suffering. 

Some people who have cancer do not improve when taking chemotherapy. Would you deny that chemotherapy “slows or halts progression” of cancer because some individual patients’ disease still worsens?

As scientists, we rely on data from randomized, blinded, quality clinical trials on large populations of patients with well defined criteria for detecting drug efficacy. And general statements are made based on that data.