New Delhi: Researchers have developed an AI-based tool that can predict episodes of mood disorders in patients using only sleep-wake data recorded by portable devices like smart watches. People suffering from mood disorders, including bipolar disorderThey experience long periods of sadness, depression, joy, or mania. Mood disorders are closely related to sleep-wake rhythms and disturbances can trigger a mood episode.
The team of researchers, including South Korea’s Institute for Basic Sciences, said the growing popularity of wearable devices has made collecting health data much easier.
“By developing a model that predicts mood episodes based solely on data from sleep-wake patterns, we have reduced the cost of data collection and significantly improved clinical applicability.”
“This study offers new possibilities for cost-effective diagnosis and treatment of patients with mood disorders,” said lead researcher Kim Jae Kyoung.
For the study, published in the journal ‘npj Digital Medicine’, researchers analyzed 429 days of data from 168 patients with mood disorders. Thirty-six sleep-wake, or circadian, rhythms were extracted and used to train machine learning algorithms.
A form of artificial intelligence (AI), a machine learning algorithm, learns to detect patterns in the data it is trained on to make predictions about the future.
The AI model the team developed was able to predict depressive, manic, and hypomanic episodes with an accuracy of 80 percent, 98 percent, and 95 percent, respectively.
“Using mathematical models of longitudinal data from 168 patients, we derived 36 features of sleep and circadian rhythm. These features enabled accurate predictions for next-day depressive, manic, and hypomanic episodes,” the authors wrote.
The researchers found that daily changes in circadian rhythms are a key predictor of mood episodes.
Specifically, delayed circadian rhythms, falling asleep, and waking up later in the day increase the risk of depressive episodes. On the other hand, advanced circadian rhythms (sleeping and waking up earlier in the day) increase the risk of manic episodes, the researchers said.
“In particular, daily circadian phase changes were the most important predictors: delays related to depressive episodes and progressions towards manic episodes,” the study authors added.
