[Familiarization to treadmill walking in unimpaired Parkinson's disease patients]

Familiarization to treadmill walking in unimpaired Parkinson's disease (PD) patients is assessed, across multiple treadmill walking sessions. Thirteen PD subjects were enrolled into the study (Eight were in a moderate stage of the disease, and 5 in an advanced stage). PD subjects attended a progressive program consisting of 12 sessions of 20 min. Walking speed, cadence, step length and coefficient of variation were assessed. ANOVA test were used to evaluate progression of disease and time influence over familiarization. PD Subjects baseline characteristics did not differ significantly between both groups and typical dependencies over progression of disease and velocity were found for cadence, step length and coefficient of variation. However, we showed that some PD subjects may require longer familiarization times and that familiarization is an adaptation process which involves parameters as velocity, cadence and gait stability. A better definition of familiarization to treadmill is needed since some parameters such as step length does not change significantly while others such as cadence, coefficient of variation and intraclass correlation coefficient does. Therefore familiarization to treadmill walking should remain on measures of velocity, cadence, reliability and variability. However, a bigger sample size is needed in order to improve the results of the present study.