Objective: To identify which is the most efficient condition in terms of distance and kind of concurrent task to identify the decline in gait automaticity in PPD by CvMob software.

Background: The impairment in automatic control due to dopaminergic depletion associated with Parkinson’s disease (PD) decreases the ability to manage the attention between two or more tasks (i.e., walking and performing a cognitive task). There is no consensus about the most efficient condition in terms of distance and kind of secondary task to assess the gait automaticity decline in PPD. The ParkiMob, a study that uses a system called CvMob, a free software for motion analysis, is appropriate to achieve reliable qualitative gait evaluation by images captured by a GoPro™ camera.

Methods: 56 PPD idiopathic (64.58 ± 8.1 years), H&Y between 1-3, tested in individual session, during ON period of medication. The gait performance was assessed in 3 distances (3, 6 and 8,40 meters), under single task (ST) condition and under two distinct dual task (DT) conditions (countdown task – CDT – and verbal fluency task – VFDT), in usual speed. During the test, a GoPro™ camera fixed in an adequate position captured the images in the 120 frames per second, that were analyzed after the end of a test using the CvMob software able to extract 16 variables.

Results: The general model for RM ANOVA showed a significative effect of H&Y and conditions for number of stride, number of reach elements in vertical direction, duration in seconds, average vector velocity, maximum vector speed reached, average horizontal speed, average vertical speed, average time that the foot is zero speed and average stride size, variables for all distances. However, only five measures showed a significative interaction between condition and distance, confirmed by post-hoc test which showed that a significant difference for all paired values for 8,40mT (8,40-meters walk test) only.

Conclusions: All distances were efficient to identify the gait automaticity decline among the disease evolution stages during the VFDT condition, but only the longer distance test was able to identify the decline in gait automaticity during the CDT. The ParkiMob, using the CvMob system, is able to distinguish the performance difference among stages of disease evolution and ST and DT conditions for nine different cinematic measures and among different complexity DT conditions for five different cinematic measures in 8,40 meter distance walking test.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/which-is-the-best-condition-to-evaluate-the-decline-in-gait-automaticity-in-people-with-parkinsons-disease-a-parkimob-study/