Pattern recognition approach to differentiation of disease severity in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

A possibility of recognition of the clinical status of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in relation to severity of the disease was investigated. Three groups: (i) healthy controls (n=15) and two subgroups of ALS patients (ii) mild (n=15) and (iii) severe (n=15) were considered as classes. Four features of the subjects: (i) their age (AGE) (ii) erythropoietin concentration in serum (SERUM), (iii) in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), and (iv) duration time of the disease (Tdis) were used for classifier construction based on the k Nearest Neighbours (k-NN) rule, known from pattern recognition theory. The presented results demonstrate that the pattern recognition approach may be useful for the evaluation of the severity of the ALS disease.