This thesis consists of four research papers presenting a microdata analysis approach to assess and evaluate the Parkinson’s disease (PD) motor symptoms using smartphone-based systems. PD is a progressive neurological disorder that is characterized by motor symptoms. It is a complex disease that requires continuous monitoring and multidimensional symptom analysis. Both patients’ perception regarding common symptom and their motor function need to be related to the repeated and time-stamped assessment; with this, the full extent of patient’s condition could be revealed. The smartphone enables and facilitates the remote, long-term and repeated assessment of PD symptoms. Two types of collected data from smartphone were used, one during a three year, and another during one-day clinical study. The data were collected from series of tests consisting of tapping and spiral motor tests. During the second time scale data collection, along smartphone-based measurements patients were video recorded while performing standardized motor tasks according to Unified Parkinson’s disease rating scales (UPDRS). At first, the objective of this thesis was to elaborate the state of the art, sensor systems, and measures that were used to detect, assess and quantify the four cardinal and dyskinetic motor symptoms. This was done through a review study. The review showed that smartphones as the new generation of sensing devices are preferred since they are considered as part of patients’ daily accessories, they are available and they include high-resolution activity data. Smartphones can capture important measures such as forces, acceleration and radial displacements that are useful for assessing PD motor symptoms. Through the obtained insights from the review study, the second objective of this thesis was to investigate whether a combination of tapping and spiral drawing tests could be useful to quantify dexterity in PD. More specifically, the aim was to develop data-driven methods to quantify and characterize dexterity in PD. The results from this study showed that tapping and spiral drawing tests that were collected by smartphone can detect movements reasonably well related to under- and over-medication. The thesis continued by developing an Approximate Entropy (ApEn)-based method, which aimed to measure the amount of temporal irregularity during spiral drawing tests. One of the disabilities associated with PD is the impaired ability to accurately time movements. The increase in timing variability among patients when compared to healthy subjects, suggests that the Basal Ganglia (BG) has a role in interval timing. ApEn method was used to measure temporal irregularity score (TIS) which could significantly differentiate the healthy subjects and patients at different stages of the disease. This method was compared to two other methods which were used to measure the overall drawing impairment and shakiness. TIS had better reliability and responsiveness compared to the other methods. However, in contrast to other methods, the mean scores of the ApEn-based method improved significantly during a 3-year clinical study, indicating a possible impact of pathological BG oscillations in temporal control during spiral drawing tasks. In addition, due to the data collection scheme, the study was limited to have no gold standard for validating the TIS. However, the study continued to further investigate the findings using another screen resolution, new dataset, new patient groups, and for shorter term measurements. The new dataset included the clinical assessments of patients while they performed tests according to UPDRS. The results of this study confirmed the findings in the previous study. Further investigation when assessing the correlation of TIS to clinical ratings showed the amount of temporal irregularity present in the spiral drawing cannot be detected during clinical assessment since TIS is an upper limb high frequency-based measure.

Background: Liver cirrhosis is a global health problem and a national health problem in Egypt. There is a lack of literature on Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQOL) and symptoms experience of liver disease and cirrhotic patients in Middle East, particularly in Egypt. Aims: This PhD had three major aims: First aim: To describe HRQOL of Egyptian liver cirrhotic patients and to identify and evaluate the factors associated with (HRQOL) physical and mental health domains. Second aim: To explore and describe experienced symptoms (prevalence, severity and hindrance) in Egyptian cirrhotic patients and to identify and evaluate factors associated with symptoms severity and symptoms hindrance (distress). Third aim: To explore and describe how cirrhotic patients in Egypt perceive social support from spouse, family and friends and to identify and evaluate factors associated with general perceived social support. Method: A cross-sectional study with a convenience sample of 401 patients from three hospitals in Cairo, Egypt, was conducted between June and August 2011. Patients were interviewed to complete a background data sheet, Short Form-36v2 (SF-36), the Liver Disease Symptom Index (LDSI)-2.0 and the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS). Results: Findings for first aim: The findings showed that all domains and component summary scores [Physical component summary score (PCS) and mental component summary score (MCS)] of the generic SF-36 were below the norm (cut-off score 50), suggesting that patients with liver cirrhosis in Egypt have poor HRQOL. About 87.2% of the patients rated their general health as poor or fair, which means the majority of these patients have low perceived general health. Many socio-demographic and medial factors were shown to be significantly associated with perceived HRQOL. Women, illiterate and unemployed people, and patients with frequent hospitalisation had poor PCS and MCS, while patients with advanced disease stage, increasing number of comorbidities and complications and those admitted to inpatients had significantly poorer PCS only. Perceived social support from a spouse had a statistically significant positive association with PCS and MCS, while perceived social support from family and friends had a statistically significant positive association with MCS only. Also, severity and hindrance of symptoms significantly correlated with PCS and MCS. Using stepwise multiple linear regression analysis, two models were developed to identify factors associated with PCS (Model 1) and MCS (Model 2) health. Model 1 could significantly explain 19% of the variation in PCS (R2 = 0.190, R2adj = 0.180, p = 0.0005), and four factors (symptoms severity, disease stage, comorbidities and employment status) were significantly (p ≤ 0.02) associated with PCS. Model 2 could significantly explain 31.7% of the variation in MCS (R2 = 0.317, R2adj = 0.308, p = 0.0005), and four factors (symptoms severity, employment status, perceived spouse support and perceived family support) were associated (p ≤ 0.04) with MCS. The key findings of this study were that severity of symptoms and social support from spouse and family were associated with HRQOL. Where patients with high symptoms severity were likely to report poor PCS and MCS; and patients with low perceived social support were likely to report poor MCS. Symptoms severity contributed significantly in explaining 28.7% of the variation in PCS and 43.6% of the variation in MCS. Findings for second aim: This study found that the majority of patients had one or more of a wide range of symptoms and social problems. Two-thirds of patients reported joint pain (78.3%), decreased appetite (75.6%) and memory problems (77.3%). Joint pain and depression were reported to have the biggest impact on daily life. Symptoms severity and distress were significantly higher among patients who were: female, illiterate, unemployed, and who had advanced cirrhosis with more complications and comorbidities (p ≤ 0.006). Symptoms severity (r=-0.206) and symptoms distress (r=-0.205) were negatively associated with perceived social support (p=0.005). Stepwise regression analysis showed that the regression model could significantly explain 19.6% of the variation in symptoms severity (R2 = 0.196, R2adj = 0.180, p = 0.0005), and 14% of the variation in hindrance of symptoms (R2 = 0.140, R2adj = 0.132, p = 0.0005). Being female, having an increasing number of liver disease complications, and having low perceived support from spouse were significantly associated with high-perceived symptoms severity and hindrance (p≤0.01). Findings for third aim: This study found that social support score was relatively high among patients with cirrhosis in Egypt (total score mean of MSPSS was 2.02± standard deviation (0.537), while perceived support from spouse was the highest source of support. 67.5% of the patients felt their spouse is around when they need him/her and 71.7% of them share their joys and sorrows with their spouse. Likewise, 64.9% of married people feel their spouse cares about their feelings. In relation to the perception of adequacy of family support, it was observed that 52.6% felt that their families do not really try to help them. At the same time, 52.1% reported that they got the emotional help and support that they needed from their families. Regarding perceived support from friends, more than half of the patients reported that their friends do not really try to help them (57.9%), they cannot count on their friends when things go wrong (65.6%) and they cannot talk about their problems with their friends (56.4%). There was a significantly positive association between the perception of social support and general health perception (GHP), suggesting that when social support decreases GHP also decreases or and vice versa (r= 0.208, p = 0.0005). Stepwise regression analysis showed that the regression model could significantly explain 10.9% of the variation in perceived social support (R2 = 0.109, R2adj = 0.100, p = 0.0005). Marital status, gender, age and employment status were significantly associated with general perceived social support (p ≤ 0.01), while unmarried, females, unemployed and elderly cirrhotic patients were vulnerable groups that were likely to perceive low social support. Overall discussion and conclusion: This is the first study to investigate HRQOL, symptoms experience and perceived social support in patients with liver cirrhosis in Egypt. All aspects of HRQOL of Egyptian cirrhotic patients were poor, and they were experiencing various symptoms that can affect their daily life. However, social support was found to be related to perceived symptoms severity and perceived poor mental health. Hence, social support may alleviate suffering for certain cirrhotic patients. Nurses have a responsibility to assess and treat symptoms that cirrhotic patients experience, particularly such treatable symptoms as depression, pain and decreased appetite. Also, nurses should involve the patient’s family in any plan of care. Future intervention studies that aim to develop programs to relieve treatable symptoms and enhance social support are also recommended.

Potato cultivars exhibit a wide variation in skin and flesh colour due to the presence of pigments. This study established that potato cultivars differ greatly with respect to types and concentrations of carotenoids in tubers. A total of 46 cultivars were evaluated for quantitative and qualitative carotenoid composition in different growing seasons, locations, storage conditions and disease symptoms. Factors controlling carotenoid accumulation were also tested by developing an in vitro minituber system as a new high-throughput model system for carotenogenesis in potato tubers. Tuber flesh colour was found to correlate with total carotenoid content in potato cultivars grown in both New Zealand and Netherlands. The main carotenoids identified in 32 potato cultivars in New Zealand were lutein, neoxanthin, violaxanthin and β-carotene. The ratio of these carotenoids varies between cultivars. Neoxanthin was detected in only 13 cultivars (10.59 to 69.21µg/g DW); violaxanthin was found only in 1 cultivar (32.76 µg/g DW). Whereas lutein and β-carotene were found in most of the cultivars but the concentration varied from (0.00 to 160.63 µg/g DW) and (0.00 to 13.62 µg/g DW) respectively. The main carotenoids identified in 12 cultivars grown in the Netherlands were neoxanthin, violaxanthin and lutein, whereas zeaxanthin was not found in any of the cultivars analysed. Marked differences were observed between the same potato cultivars grown in New Zealand and the Netherlands. Therefore cultivars were analysed over a second growing season to assess stability in carotenoids composition. The carotenoid profiles of the potato tubers grown for two different seasons showed highly significant differences between the cultivars, the seasons, the carotenoid pigments, and all combinations of interactions, indicating the complex nature of factors influencing carotenoid composition. Reflectance colorimeter measurement of yellow hue component in this study confirmed that the higher the total carotenoid content, the greater the yellow intensity colour. Eight cultivars were grown at three locations in New Zealand and Agria and Desiree were grown at eight locations in the Netherlands to further investigate the stability of carotenoid composition. Highly significant differences were observed between the cultivars, the locations, the carotenoid pigments, and all combinations of interactions, which emphasises that changes in carotenoid composition are complex and the responses are not consistent across cultivars. Reflectance colorimeter measurement of yellow hue component confirmed the relationship between the yellow colour intensity of tuber flesh, as well as confirming the interaction between colour and locations. Disease and post harvest storage conditions markedly influenced the levels of total carotenoid, neoxanthin, violaxanthin, zeaxanthin, lutein and β-carotene in potatoes. The magnitude of these effects depends on the cultivar, time of storage, and the intensity of powdery scab symptoms. Results showed that long term storage resulted in the accumulation of neoxanthin, violaxanthin and zeaxanthin with a concomitant decreased of lutein, β-carotene and total carotenoid content. Genotypes infected with disease (lower and higher scab score) resulted in accumulation of violaxanthin, β-carotene and total carotenoid with a concomitant decreased in neoxanthin and lutein. A high-throughput model system for investigating carotenoid biogenesis in potato tubers was developed. This involved in vitro potato minitubers and was validated by assessing the effects of environmental variables, such as drought stress, light intensity and nutrient availability on carotenoid accumulation. Light influenced the presence of zeaxanthin, whereas water stress and nutrient strength influenced the accumulation of neoxanthin and violaxanthin. Although these factors had an effect on the carotenoid content and profile, the most influential factor appeared to be cultivar selection.