System and Method to Determine ME/CFS and Long COVID Disease Severity Using a Wearable Sensor

TL;DR

This study introduces UpTime, a simple wearable sensor parameter that objectively measures disease severity in ME/CFS and Long COVID by tracking upright time, showing significant differentiation between healthy controls and affected individuals.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel, easy-to-use wearable sensor metric, UpTime, for objectively assessing disease severity in ME/CFS and Long COVID patients.

Findings

UpTime significantly distinguishes between healthy controls and ME/CFS patients (p=0.00004).

UpTime significantly distinguishes between healthy controls and Long COVID patients (p=0.01185).

Steps/Day does not significantly differentiate Long COVID from controls (p=0.3).

Abstract

Objective: We present a simple parameter, calculated from a single wearable sensor, that can be used to objectively measure disease severity in people with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) or Long COVID. We call this parameter UpTime. Methods: Prior research has shown that the amount of time a person spends upright, defined as lower legs vertical with feet on the floor, correlates strongly with ME/CFS disease severity. We use a single commercial inertial measurement unit (IMU) attached to the ankle to calculate the percentage of time each day that a person spends upright (i.e., UpTime) and number of Steps/Day. As Long COVID shares symptoms with ME/CFS, we also apply this method to determine Long COVID disease severity. We performed a trial with 55 subjects broken into three cohorts, healthy controls, ME/CFS, and Long COVID. Subjects wore the IMU on their ankle for a period of 7 days. UpTime and Steps/Day were calculated each day and results compared between cohorts. Results: UpTime effectively distinguishes between healthy controls and subjects diagnosed with ME/CFS ($\mathbf{p = 0.00004}$) and between healthy controls and subjects diagnosed with Long COVID ($\mathbf{p = 0.01185}$). Steps/Day did distinguish between controls and subjects with ME/CFS ($\mathbf{p = 0.01}$) but did not distinguish between controls and subjects with Long COVID ($\mathbf{p = 0.3}$). Conclusion: UpTime is an objective measure of ME/CFS and Long COVID severity. UpTime can be used as an objective outcome measure in clinical research and treatment trials. Significance: Objective assessment of ME/CFS and Long COVID disease severity using UpTime could spur development of treatments by enabling the effect of those treatments to be easily measured.