Active clinical trials for "Gait Disorders, Neurologic"

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is the most common central nervous system inflammatory demyelinating disease which causes motor and sensory deficits, cerebellar symptoms, and balance problems. Due to these symptoms, gait abnormalities are common in MS, even in patients with low degrees of impairment. The upper limb has an important role on postural control and gait stability. Affected arm swing movement and asymmetry during gait are common in neurological disorders such as Parkinson's disease (PD) even in early stages of the disease and arm swing treatment has been acknowledged to enhance gait and normalize arm swing in individuals with PD. The presence of arm swing changes during walking in MS patients, similar to PD, especially in the early period, may be an indicator of balance problems, this was, however, not investigated as such. Therefore, the aim of the current study is to assess the arm swing during gait in people with MS shortly after their diagnosis in early MS.

This study aims to look at how changes to a person's functional electrical stimulation might change how they walk. Functional electrical stimulation (FES) is commonly used to help people with foot drop from upper motor neurone conditions such as stroke or multiple sclerosis. This group of people have muscle weakness which makes it difficult to lift the foot, which causes trips and falls. FES reduces foot drop by using a portable device to apply short electrical pulses to the nerve which lifts the foot. The FES device stimulates this nerve only during the swing phase, when the foot is off the floor. Typically this is achieved by using a foot-switch, which detects when the heel leaves the floor. Stimulation begins a short interval of time after the heel leaves the floor, ramps up from zero to set stimulation for the individual, and at another period of time after the heel hits the floor, stimulation ramps down from set amount to zero. There are four time intervals described here which can be varied by the clinician on the device:- Delay (the time between heel lift and the start of stimulation) Ramp up (the time for stimulation to reach full strength) Extension (the time between heel strike and the ramp down) Ramp down (the time for stimulation to reach zero from full strength) These intervals are usually set by experienced clinicians using a qualitative assessment of the patient's walking and trial-and-error. A literature review has found no published studies which compare walking with different timing. This knowledge would be useful for clinicians, who could use this information as a starting point in finding the best timing parameters for each patient.

In the literature, most of the studies examining the gait characteristics and balance separately or examining the relationship between them are on patients with COPD. No study examining gait parameters in other obstructive pulmonary patients such as bronchiectasis and asthma was found.A convincing link between gait disturbances and falls in COPD patients is still unknown and further research is needed. Therefore, the purpose of our study; gait parameters and balance in individuals with obstructive pulmonary disease. We will also examine the relationship between gait parameters and extrapulmonary clinical indicators of these individuals.

The study was aimed to investigate the role of cognition n in FoG.

At the foot and ankle group at the Department of Orthopaedics, Uppsala University Hospital, the routine is to perform a tendon transfer of peroneus longus to brevis in case of a ruptured peroneus brevis tendon in the ankle. The reports of patient outcome from this surgery varies in different studies. The aim of the current study is to analyse how well the patients think their general health has improved after the surgery, and how they perceive that the foot function has changed after the surgery. In an objective way the changes in gait after surgery will be measured with gait analysis.

Background With the global population aging and life expectancy increasing, dementia has turned a priority in the health care system. In Chile, dementia is one of the most important causes of disability in elderly, corresponding nearly to 40% of cases, and the most rapidly growing cause of death in the last twenty years. Cognitive complaints are considered a marker able to predict cognitive and functional decline, incident mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and incident dementia. The Gero cohort is the Chilean core clinical project of the Gerocenter on Brain Health and Metabolism (GERO), whose aim is to establish the capacity in Chile to foster cutting edge and multidisciplinary research on aging. Objective This study has two main objectives. First, i) to analyze the rate of functional decline and progression to clinical dementia and their risks factors (biomedical, imaging, psychosocial, and clinical) in a community-dwelling elderly with subjective cognitive complaint, through a population-based study. Second, ii) to build the capacity to undertake clinical research on brain aging and dementia disorders and create Data-Bank and Bio-Banks with an appropriate infrastructure to further studies and facilitate access to the data and samples for research. Methods The Gero cohort aims at recruiting 300 elderly subjects (>70 years) from the community of Santiago (Chile), following them up for at least 3 years. Eligible people are non-demented adults with subjective cognitive complaint, which are reported either by the participant, the proxy or both. Participants are identified through a household census. The protocol of evaluation is based on a multidimensional approach including socio-demographic, biomedical, psychosocial, neuropsychological, neuropsychiatric and motor assessments. Neuroimaging, blood and stool sample samples are also included. This multidimensional evaluation is carried out in a baseline assessment and 3 follow-ups assessment, at 18 and 36 months. In addition, in months 6, 24, and 30, a telephone interview is done in order to keep contact with the participants and to assess general well-being.

Hearing impairment is common in older adults, and recent research points to associations between hearing impairment and balance/mobility. The association may be due to more attentional resources being used to compensate for the sensory loss, with less resources available for maintaining balance. The aim of this projects is therefore to investigate whether an exercise program with focus on motor-cognitive tasks is feasible for older adults with hearing impairment. The study is meant as a proof-of-concept study, where trialling will be evaluated, and results will be used to inform the design of a larger and adequately powered study.

The loss of sensorial feedback causes gait impairment in hemiparesis. The studies show that proprioceptive impairment of knee is related to falling in these patients. The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of proprioception on balance and gait functions in hemiparetic individuals.

The loss of sensorial feedback causes gait impairment in hemiparesis. The studies show that proprioceptive impairment of knee is related to falling in these patients. The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of proprioception on balance and gait functions in hemiparetic individuals.

The prevalence of neurodegenerative diseases will increase over the next decades driven by ageing population. It seems important to develop reliable, replicable and accessible diagnostic tools. This is a prospective study whose objective is to study the spatio-temporal parameters of gait in patients with Alzheimer's and Lewy body diseases. 64 patients were included in this study. A comparison of the two pathologies was conducted, followed by an analysis based on four groups (mild, severe Alzheimer's disease, mild, severe Lewy body disease) and a study of the severity of the diseases. To study these parameters, we used the Gaitrite treadmill. The analysis of spatio-temporal parameters of walking in Alzheimer's disease and Lewy body disease enables to identify discriminating variables between the two pathologies. The probability of suffering from an Alzheimer's disease decreases with the pace increase but increases with variations in length of the step, and with the rotation of the foot. While the probability of suffering from Lewy body disease increases with the pace, variations in the step duration, and the duration of double support. These results are interesting but do not allow to establish a diagnostic score for these two diseases. The monitoring of the variations of these parameters at individual level would probably be more relevant and would enable to detect dual pathologies.