More and more smartwatches can precisely measure the heart rate of their wearers.
According to US scientists, this can help detect Covid-19 infections at an early stage.
In the fight against the
Corona
* pandemic, researchers are now also relying on fitness trackers such as the
Apple
*
Watch
.
They provide precise
heart rate
data
.
The
scientists
now
want to take
advantage of this.
Munich - Smartwatches such as the
Apple Watch
* and fitness trackers from other manufacturers such as
Garmin
or
Fitbit
can help
to detect
Covid-19
diseases - even before the symptoms appear.
This is reported by the US television broadcaster CBS, citing corresponding studies by the world-famous
Stanford University
and the
Mount Sinai
University Hospital
in
New York
.
In their investigations, the researchers used the sensors for measuring the heart rate in the fitness trackers.
They have long been standard in smartwatches.
In the meantime, the corresponding technology has matured so that the Clever watches can measure even the smallest changes in the heartbeat of their wearers.
And that's exactly where the researchers come in.
Because with the spread of an infection, the so-called
heart rate variability
(
HRV
) also changes, i.e. the fluctuation range between two heartbeats.
In healthy people, the corresponding variability is around a tenth of a second.
An infection like
Covid-19
leads to an extremely violent defense reaction of the body, the corresponding heart rate variability decreases.
While the nervous system is wide awake in healthy people and can therefore react more quickly to changed conditions such as the increased need for oxygen when climbing stairs, the ability to react is
significantly lower
in people with a virus disease such as
Covid-19
.
"This change allows us to predict whether a person is sick before they even know," study author Professor
Rob Hirten
of Mount Sinai Hospital told CBS.
According to the study, which was based exclusively on data from the Apple Watch and the iPhone, corresponding changes in HRV values
could be detected
on average a good six days before the first signs of
corona
disease.
Apple Watch: Disease information days before the outbreak of the corona symptoms
Researchers at Stanford University came to a similar conclusion.
According
to an article for the US journal
Nature Biomedical Engineering
from last November
, 81 percent of the
corona-
positive subjects had an increased heartbeat days before the onset of the first symptoms
.
In addition to the
Apple
Watch, comparable models from Garmin or Fitbit were also used - with comparable results.
However, the researchers indicated in their work that their results were only an intermediate stage.
Changes in heart rate and heart rate variability did not necessarily indicate Covid 19 disease, as other infections also led to similar changes in HRV and heartbeat.
In addition, the values would have to be
checked
during examinations with significantly more
Covid 19
sufferers, it says.
Conversely, however, the data would offer another starting point to contain the spread of the pandemic, it is said.
* Merkur.de
is part of the Ippen Digital network.