Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 8, 2025
Gait Analysis of Age-dependent Motor Impairments in Mice with Neurodegeneration
Published on: June 18, 2018
Unsupervised but not supervised gait parameters are related to fatigue in Parkinson's disease: a pilot study
Andrea Pilotto1,2,3, Andrea Rizzardi1,2, Cinzia Zatti1,2
1Neurology Unit, Department of Clinical and Experimental Sciences, University of Brescia, Brescia, Italy.
Introduction:
Fatigue is a common and disabling symptom in Parkinson's disease (PD), also affecting gait. Detection of fatigue-associated changes of gait using mobile health technologies (MHT) could become increasingly effective.
Methods:
Cognitively unimpaired PD patients without fluctuations (UPDRS IV < 1) underwent a standard neurological assessment including the PD-Fatigue scale (PFS-16). PD patients with (PD-F) and without fatigue (PD-N) were matched for age, sex, cognitive function and disease severity. Each participant underwent MHT gait assessment under supervised condition (SC) and unsupervised condition (UC).
Results:
Gait parameters of 21 PD-F and 21 PD-N did not significantly differ under SC. Under UC, PD-F showed higher step time, step time variability and asymmetry index compared to PD-N and the PFS-16 correlated with step time.
Conclusion:
This is the first MHT-based study with PD patients showing a correlation between fatigue and gait parameters. In addition, the data collected suggest that UC is clearly superior to SC in addressing this question.
