Objective: To investigate the effectiveness of dance as an additional treatment for people with Parkinson’s disease (PD).

Background: Common pharmacological treatments for PD lessen the impact of symptoms, but do not seem to alter disease progression. Dance, a novel area of research, may aid in providing additional benefits to motor functioning (balance, gait speed), quality of life, positive affect, and social interactions (Heiberger et al., 2011; Shanahan et al., 2015). Based on such findings, we predicted dance, as an intervention, would improve motor functioning.

Methods: We examined 19 people with PD (ON meds), and 22 healthy controls/caregivers who danced. MDS-UPDRS part III (motor examination) assessment was completed immediately before and after dance class and videotaped for later analysis (Heiberger et al. 2011). Participants voluntarily engaged in the Dance with Parkinson’s (DwP) program at Canada’s National Ballet School (NBS) for 1.25-hour dance classes modeled on the Dance for PD® format. Of the 41 total participants, 7 PD and 5 controls were tested more than once. Each participants’ performance on the UPDRS was scored by four MDS-certified raters and average total scores were obtained.

Results: The results revealed significant main effects between UPDRS scores before and after dance in people with PD, F(1, 39) = 50.38, p< .001, and a large effect η2 = 0.44, between PD and healthy controls, F(1, 39) = 80.31, p < .001, and a large effect η2 = 0.67, and an interaction between groups (PD vs control) and condition (before vs after dance class), F(1, 39) = 25.66, p< .001, and a medium effect η2 = 0.22. Most importantly, people with PD showed a significant decrease in their scores following dance class, indicating an improvement in motor functioning. In addition, the higher UPDRS scores obtained for people with PD demonstrated greater impairments in motor function compared to controls. The significant interaction obtained revealed that the effect of dance differs for people with PD compared to controls, such that dance had a significant impact on motor functioning for those with PD, but not for healthy controls.

Conclusions: Our result suggests that dance improved measured motor functioning in people with PD and is useful in addition to ongoing therapies. Motor control was improved after participating in the dance class in comparison to motor impairment shown earlier.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/improved-motor-functioning-of-people-with-parkinsons-disease-following-dance-intervention/