It seems like information taken from a fiction movie, and that a pair of shoes allows you to help control your health conditions is truly wonderful. Technology is growing every time leaving us surprised with what it can have for us this time it benefits those who need it most, in this case, in particular, Parkinson’s patients, and to be able to reduce the discomforts that having this disease brings, and also in the best way through the use of technology that is once again used for the benefit of those who need it most.
The newest technological innovation as we have been announcing stands out in a pair of shoes that will serve to reduce the own anomalies that a Parkinson’s patient may present, but how does this new invention work more in-depth.
Technology can help cure or at least improve the lives of the sick, it is a fact that is demonstrated every day. And not all devices have to be complicated systems with artificial intelligence or augmented reality. The University of Twente, located in the city of Enschede, in the Netherlands, has devised an effective tool that can help Parkinson’s patients by installing small laser emitters on top of the patient’s shoe.
One of the great problems of these patients is the freezing of the march: the person suffering from this disease is unable to take a step forward even if he tries, he is paralyzed and can even lose his balance and fall. Studies have shown that during these episodes the situation is unblocked if the person concentrates on a point. And this is where the laser shoes come in.
Its creator is Murielle Ferraye, the scientist of the aforementioned university, who has invented shoes that have a laser projection device that produces a line of about 45 centimeters from the tip of the foot so that the user can have a reference of the footprint. This beam is only turned on when the shoe detects that it is at rest.
This system, published in the journal Neurology, has been tested in 21 patients demonstrating that incidents were reduced by almost half, as well as the duration of stops. Most patients said they would wear the shoes regularly, and did not care that the line was projected even when they were not frozen. The future work, Ferraye explained in a press release from the university, will be aimed at activating the laser only when a freezing episode is detected.
It continues investigating.
At present, several investigations have been carried out on this disease, thus achieving a significant advance to specify a better knowledge about this anomaly. What has allowed different scientists to achieve the development of effective tools to obtain an early diagnosis and in this way patients can undergo more aggressive treatments that can alleviate the discomfort that represents having this disease. It should be noted that to this day, Levodopa is still the most used treatment in the world because it is more effective.
During a period of approximately 4 months during 2016 important discoveries were made by scientists who were studying at Northwestern University in the city of Chicago in the United States. These discoveries revealed a new potential cause of the disease, referring to possible mutations of a gene called (TMEM230).
Other studies made later by the medical school of the University of Pittsburgh, also in the United States, revealed that “the reason why the protein alpha-synuclein related to Parkinson’s, a major constituent of Lewy bodies that are the pathological hallmark of Parkinson’s disease is toxic to neurons in the brain. “
In the same way, it can be said that Parkinson’s can come to fear genetic relationship with other types of traces coming from human beings, this can help to achieve a more regular understanding of this pathology and be able to help those who see themselves. This way affected; that is, what basically seek these investigations is to check specific cases as it did, the Nature magazine in 2016 with important studies, which also made great progress by revealing that a very positive genetic correlation with intracranial volume was observed.
As we have been saying in this article, science does not stop growing, that is why its benefits nowadays reach those who suffer from this disease in order to facilitate their day to day with these modern shoes, everyone who worked on it they have the best expectations waiting for them to arrive soon in Costa Rica, since they will currently be available only in the Netherlands and in a good part of the United States.