Volume 34, Issue 4 e14425
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Predicting circadian phase in community-dwelling later-life adults using actigraphy data

Caleb Mayer

Caleb Mayer

Department of Mathematics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

Department of Genetics, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA

Contribution: Conceptualization, ​Investigation, Writing - original draft, Methodology, Writing - review & editing, Visualization, Software, Data curation, Formal analysis

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Dae Wook Kim

Dae Wook Kim

Department of Mathematics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, KAIST, Daejeon, Republic of Korea

Department of Mathematics, Sogang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

Contribution: Conceptualization, ​Investigation, Writing - original draft, Methodology, Writing - review & editing, Formal analysis, Supervision, Visualization

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Meina Zhang

Meina Zhang

College of Nursing, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, USA

Contribution: Writing - review & editing, Data curation, Resources, Project administration, Formal analysis

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Minki P. Lee

Minki P. Lee

Department of Mathematics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

Contribution: Writing - review & editing, Formal analysis

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Daniel B. Forger

Daniel B. Forger

Department of Mathematics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

Michigan Center for Interdisciplinary and Applied Mathematics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

Contribution: Writing - review & editing, Methodology, Project administration, Supervision

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Helen J. Burgess

Helen J. Burgess

Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

Contribution: Writing - review & editing, Funding acquisition, Conceptualization, Supervision

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Chooza Moon

Corresponding Author

Chooza Moon

College of Nursing, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, USA

Correspondence

Chooza Moon, College of Nursing, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, 52242, USA.

Email: [email protected]

Contribution: Writing - review & editing, Conceptualization, ​Investigation, Funding acquisition, Data curation, Supervision

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First published: 08 December 2024
Citations: 1

Caleb Mayer and Dae Wook Kim these authors contributed equally.

Summary

The accurate estimation of circadian phase in the real-world has a variety of applications, including chronotherapeutic drug delivery, reduction of fatigue, and optimal jet lag or shift work scheduling. Recent work has developed and adapted algorithms to predict time-consuming and costly laboratory circadian phase measurements using mathematical models with actigraphy or other wearable data. Here, we validate and extend these results in a home-based cohort of later-life adults, ranging in age from 58 to 86 years. Analysis of this population serves as a valuable extension to our understanding of phase prediction, since key features of circadian timekeeping (including circadian amplitude, response to light stimuli, and susceptibility to circadian misalignment) may become altered in older populations and when observed in real-life settings. We assessed the ability of four models to predict ground truth dim light melatonin onset, and found that all the models could generate predictions with mean absolute errors of approximately 1.4 h or below using actigraph activity data. Simulations of the model with activity performed as well or better than the light-based modelling predictions, validating previous findings in this novel cohort. Interestingly, the models performed comparably to actigraph-derived sleep metrics, with the higher-order and nonphotic activity-based models in particular demonstrating superior performance. This work provides evidence that circadian rhythms can be reasonably estimated in later-life adults living in home settings through mathematical modelling of data from wearable devices.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT

Financial disclosure: Daniel B Forger (DBF) is the CSO of Arcascope, a company that makes circadian rhythms software. Both he and the University of Michigan own equity in Arcascope. HJB serves on the scientific advisory board for Natrol, LLC and is a consultant for F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

The computer codes used in this study are accessible from the GitHub repository: https://github.com/ojwalch/predicting_dlmo. Further information and requests for resources should be directed to and will be fulfilled when possible by the lead contact, Chooza Moon ([email protected]).

The full text of this article hosted at iucr.org is unavailable due to technical difficulties.