ISSN 2348-1218 (print) International Journal of Interdisciplinary Research and Innovations ISSN 2348-1226 (online) Vol. 10, Issue 2, pp: (61-76), Month: April - June 2022, Available at: www.researchpublish.com
Validating A Smartphone-based Biomarker Instrument Lyfas CovidAnxiety Detector (LAD) in the Indian Population Subhagata Chattopadhyay1*, Rupam Das1 1
Department of Research and Development (Digital Health), Acculi Labs Pvt. Ltd., Bangalore 560098, Karnataka, India *
Corresponding Author information: Subhagata Chattopadhyay
Clinical Head, Department of Research and Development (Digital Health) Acculi Labs Pvt. Ltd. Bangalore 560098, Karnataka, India DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6631413
Published Date: 10-June-2022
Abstract: Mind-heart-body is tightly intertwined. Anxiety is one of the most prevalent mental health issues during the COVID pandemic. Lyfas is a smartphone-based biomarker instrument that has been used as a CovidAnxiety Detector (LAD) where SD2/SD1 has been considered the key optical biomarker of anxiety and its other adverse health consequences. The objective of this study is to validate the efficacy of LAD with that of two gold-standard anxiety rating instruments – (i) 7-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7) and (ii) 14-item Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale (HAM-A). A total of 1454 Indian adults (Male 955, Female 499) within the age group of 18-87 years (median and average age of 39.56 and 37 years respectively), divided into three age groups: 18-30 years, 31-50 years, and >50 years who were RTPCR positive took (i) GAD-7, (ii) HAM-A, and (iii) Lyfas tests daily till they became RTPCR negative (average span of 14 days). Internal consistency (α), Spearman’s rank correlation (r), Classification metric - sensitivity, specificity, precision, accuracy, fscore, and Youden’s index of LAD has been computed and finally, the inter-rater reliability between (a) LAD and GAD-7 and (b) LAD and HAM-A is measured with Bland-Altman Reliability Assessment. LAD shows high inter-rater reliability (i.e., the minimum proportional bias) around the mean difference with the Bland-Altman test, good-to-excellent internal consistency (>0.8 and >0.9, respectively), and high correlations (r>0.6) of LAD with GAD-7 and HAM-A in the 18-30 years age group. LAD shows high average accuracy (0.9953 and 0.9764 in males and females respectively), precision (>0.9), and Youden’s index (0.9976 and 0.8633), for males and females. Hence, LAD is a reliable and novel smartphonebased non-invasive and ubiquitous biomarker clinical instrument to screen and monitor GAD and its adverse consequences such as sudden cardiac death and suicide in adults, especially in the ongoing pandemic situations. Keywords: COVID-19, Lyfas CovidAnxiety Detector, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Hamilton Anxiety rating scale, Sudden cardiac death, Suicide.
I. INTRODUCTION GAD comes under neurotic disorder along with phobia and is the most common mental health issue globally with a prevalence rate of 5.8% in the Indian population (1). Here, irrespective of any untoward incidence, patients feel extreme threat and apprehension of catastrophe, which is uncontrollable and thus abruptly brings down the quality of life. Researchers have found that GAD has certain types of personality traits (endophenotype of pathological worries, neuroticism, and frightfulness due to uncertainties) and hence genetic linkage, such as 5-HTT, 5-HT1A, BDNF, MAOA known as ‘the anxious gene’ (2) along with the neurochemicals has given it multilevel pathophysiological cascading
Page | 61 Research Publish Journals