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A game specially designed for mobile phones can detect people at risk of Alzheimer's disease – according to a new study from the University of East Anglia.
The researchers studied game data from an app called Sea Hero Quest, which has been downloaded and used by more than 4.3 million people worldwide.
The game, created by Deutsche Telekom in partnership with Alzheimer's Research UK, University College London (UCL), the University of East Anglia and game developers, Glitchers was designed to help researchers better understand dementia by observing how the brain works in relation to spatial navigation.
As players weave their way through mazes of islands and icebergs, the research team is able to translate every 0.5 seconds of play into scientific data.
The team studied how people genetically predisposed to Alzheimer's disease play the game – compared to people who are not.
The results, published in the journal PNAS, show that people genetically at risk for developing Alzheimer's disease can be distinguished from those who are not at a specific level of the Sea Hero Quest game.
The results are particularly important because a standard memory and reflection test does not distinguish risk groups from others.
Professor Michael Hornberger, principal investigator at the Norwich School of Medicine at UEA, said: "Dementia will affect 135 million people worldwide by 2050. We need to identify people earlier to reduce their risk of developing dementia in the future.
"The current diagnosis of dementia is strongly based on memory symptoms, which, as we now know, occur when the disease is very advanced.On the contrary, new evidence shows that subtle deficits of spatial navigation and awareness can precede memory symptoms of many years.
"Our current findings show that we can reliably detect such subtle navigational changes in healthy individuals with genetic risk of Alzheimer's disease, without symptoms or complaints of problems." Our findings will inform future recommendations. diagnosis and treatment of the disease to treat this devastating disease. "
The data collected by the Sea Hero Quest application is essential to the research, as every two minutes spent playing the game equates to five hours of laboratory research. And having three million players in the world equates to more than 1,700 years of laboratory research.
The team studied game data collected from 27,108 British players aged 50 to 75 – the age group most vulnerable to developing Alzheimer's disease over the next decade.
They compared these baseline data to a smaller group of 60 people who underwent genetic testing in the laboratory.
In the small laboratory group, 31 volunteers were carrying the APOE4 gene, which is known to be related to Alzheimer's disease, and 29 people do not have one. Both lab groups were matched for age, sex, education, and nationality with the reference cohort.
The genetic risk for Alzheimer's disease is complicated. People (about one in four) who own a copy of the APOE4 gene are about three times more likely to have Alzheimer's disease and develop the disease sooner.
The teacher. Hornberger said: "We found that people with high genetic risk, APOE4 carriers, performed poorly in space navigation, using less efficient routes to achieve control.
"It's really important because they are people without memory problems.
"Meanwhile, people without the APOE4 gene traveled about the same distance as the 27,000 people making up the baseline score.This difference in performance was particularly pronounced where the navigation space was large and open. .
"This means we can detect people with genetic risk of Alzheimer's disease based on how they play."
The team has previously reported that Sea Hero Quest has found people in different countries and different populations.
Gillian Coughlan, also from the Norwich Medical School of UEA, said: "This study shows that data collected from people who downloaded and played Sea Hero Quest can be used as a reference to help identify genetically more at risk of developing Alzheimer's disease in smaller groups.
"Sea Hero Quest has been successful where a conventional memory and thinking test has failed, demonstrating the strength of the implementation of large scale science projects focused on citizenship and the application of Big Data technologies, to improve the early detection of diseases such as Alzheimer's disease.
"This global project, Sea Hero Quest, provides an unprecedented opportunity to study the number of thousands of people from different countries and cultures that navigate the space, helping us better understand how we use our brains to navigate and how develop more personalized measures for future diagnostic and addiction treatment programs in dementia research.
"This is the visible part of the iceberg and there is still a lot of work to be done to extract and exploit the wealth of data collected as part of Deutsche Telekom's Sea Hero Quest project."
Professor Hugo Spiers, of UCL, said, "Our discovery highlights the value of gathering large data with accurate data to assist in the development of digital tools for medical diagnostics. "
Hilary Evans, Executive Director of Alzheimer's Research UK, said: "We often hear heartbreaking stories about people with dementia who get lost and who fail to find their homes. Such spatial navigation difficulties are among the first warning signs the condition.
"Research shows us that brain changes associated with diseases such as Alzheimer's disease start years before symptoms such as memory loss are manifested and that for Alzheimer's treatments are effective, it is likely that they should be administered at the very beginning of the brain disease.
"The use of Big Data to improve the early and accurate detection of diseases that cause dementia can revolutionize the way we study and treat the disease." Sea Hero Quest is an amazing example of how pioneering research can help scientists to get close to a life-changing breakthrough. "
Hans-Christian Schwingen, brand manager at Deutsche Telekom, said: "Sea Hero Quest has demonstrated the unique power of innovative cross-industry partnerships to advance research, and we are very proud to have contributed to the achievement of A project so revolutionary and are excited to see the future information generated by the analysis of the data set collected. "
"Big data in space navigation – towards a personalized cognitive diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease at" genetic risk "is published in the journal PNAS.
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