Beyond fitness tracking: The use of consumer-grade wearable data from normal volunteers in cardiovascular and lipidomics research

Abstract

The use of consumer-grade wearables for purposes beyond fitness tracking has not been comprehensively explored. We generated and analyzed multidimensional data from 233 normal volunteers, integrating wearable data, lifestyle questionnaires, cardiac imaging, sphingolipid profiling, and multiple clinical-grade cardiovascular and metabolic disease markers. We show that subjects can be stratified into distinct clusters based on daily activity patterns and that these clusters are marked by distinct demographic and behavioral patterns. While resting heart rates (RHRs) performed better than step counts in being associated with cardiovascular and metabolic disease markers, step counts identified relationships between physical activity and cardiac remodeling, suggesting that wearable data may play a role in reducing overdiagnosis of cardiac hypertrophy or dilatation in active individuals. Wearable-derived activity levels can be used to identify known and novel activity-modulated sphingolipids that are in turn associated with insulin sensitivity. Our findings demonstrate the potential for wearables in biomedical research and personalized health.

Sleep and BMI: Do (Fitbit) bands aid?

“…More generally, previous work 2, 3 and that described here demonstrates the significant potential for wearables in global biomedical research and further, as we used openly available data, this analysis shows the benefits of sharing observational data 4 .…”

“…Data was obtained from the study by Lim and colleagues 3 . In brief, this study generated Fitbit Charge heart rate (HR) data from a cohort of volunteers tracked for a median duration of 4 days 3 .…”

“…In brief, this study generated Fitbit Charge heart rate (HR) data from a cohort of volunteers tracked for a median duration of 4 days 3 . The volunteers underwent comprehensive profiling including activity tracking (step count and sleep tracking) using the Fitbit Charge HR wearable sensor and BMI measurement at day of recruitment.…”

“…The volunteers underwent comprehensive profiling including activity tracking (step count and sleep tracking) using the Fitbit Charge HR wearable sensor and BMI measurement at day of recruitment. From the total cohort of 233 individuals contributing data 3 , association analyses were conducted on subjects who had valid measurements for all metric types and who had more than one day of sleep data.…”

“…A limitation of the Xu et al study however, as noted by the authors 2 , is the lack of diversity of ethnicity in their study population, with the majority of participants being of European descent. In order to assess the utility of wearables for global research we used data from a recently published study 3 to investigate the relationship between sleep and BMI in a largely Chinese population.…”