Smartwatches that can collect physical and physiological data on users could be potentially interesting tools in biomedicine to gain a better understanding of brain diseases and behavioural disorders and possible driver mutations related to these pathologies. This is stated in a study published in the journal Cell, and led by the co-author Mark Gerstein, from Yale University (United States). The study includes the participation of Professor Diego Garrido Martín, from the Department of Genetics, Microbiology and Statistics of the Faculty of Biology at the University of Barcelona.

Using smartwatch data from more than 5,000 adolescents, the research team could train artificial intelligence models to predict whether individuals had different psychiatric illnesses and found genes associated with these illnesses. The results suggest that these wearable sensors may enable a much more detailed understanding and treatment of psychiatric illnesses.

People with the skin condition psoriasis often have invisible inflammation in the small intestine with an increased propensity for ‘leaky gut’, according to new research at Uppsala University. These changes in the gut could explain why psoriasis sufferers often have gastrointestinal problems and are more prone to developing Crohn’s disease. The study is published in Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) – Molecular Basis of Disease.

Psoriasis is a hereditary, chronic skin condition that can also result in inflammation of the joints. In Sweden, almost 300,000 people live with some form of the condition. Chronic inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), especially Crohn’s disease, are more common in patients with psoriasis than in the rest of the population.