NEW YORK, Oct 21 (Reuters Health) -- The failure of a self-winding wristwatch to keep proper time signaled the early onset of Parkinson's disease for one elderly woman, according to researchers.
Such watches depend on motion to keep going -- and reduced movement may not only "freeze time," it may also be an early sign of Parkinson's disease.
Reporting in the October 21st issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, Drs. Pietro Mazzoni and Blair Ford of Columbia University in New York City, report the case of a 68-year-old woman whose husband had given both her and their daughter self-winding wristwatches.
They write that "after the patient had worn the watch on her left wrist for a few days, it stopped working." The woman sent the watch to the manufacturer, who found nothing wrong with it. She then swapped wristwatches with her daughter -- only to find that her 'broken' watch mysteriously resumed proper function when worn by her daughter. At the same time, the daughter's watch stopping working when transferred to the patient's arm.
The malfunctioning watch also began working after the woman began to wear it on her right, rather than left, wrist. However, in the end the woman decided to purchase a battery-operated model, which she wore on her left wrist. That watch functioned perfectly, and the authors say the woman "gave the matter no further thought."
So, what strange force made 'time stand still' for this woman? Mazzoni and Ford explain that self-winding watches "are powered by an internal ratchet mechanism that relies on normal motion of the arm to wind an internal spring." They add that, 3 years after abandoning her self-winding wristwatch, the woman was diagnosed with a "rigidity of the arm" characteristic of Parkinson's disease.
"In retrospect," say the authors, the watch "probably stopped working when she wore it on her left wrist because there was a lack of spontaneous activity in that arm." This relative inactivity might have gone unnoticed by the patient herself, but was enough to cause a breakdown in the function of the watch. "This unusual 'freezing of time' was the first symptom of her Parkinson's disease," the authors conclude.
The woman's condition has since improved following drug therapy.
