Protective Step Training



Status:Not yet recruiting
Conditions:Parkinsons Disease
Therapuetic Areas:Neurology
Healthy:No
Age Range:50 - 90
Updated:3/31/2019
Start Date:April 1, 2019
End Date:February 1, 2021
Contact:Daniel Peterson, PhD
Email:daniel.peterson1@asu.edu
Phone:602 827 2279

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Protective Step Training in People With Parkinson's Disease and Postural Disturbances

The primary purpose of this project is to determine the preliminary effectiveness of
protective step training to improve balance and reduce falls in people with Parkinson's
disease (PD) and postural disturbances. A secondary purpose is to understand which baseline
patient characteristics predict responsiveness to treatment. By informing 1) the
effectiveness of a promising rehabilitative intervention, and 2) the selection of the
participants that will be most responsive to treatment, these data may enhance clinicians'
ability to treat balance disturbances in people with PD. Importantly, protective step
training, described in this proposal, can be quickly deployed in the clinic at minimal cost.
Therefore, if shown to be effective via this and subsequent trials, this approach can be
easily integrated into care, immediately impacting a large number of people with PD.

This project contains 3 aims: Aims 1 and 2 address the primary goal of this project:
Determining the effectiveness of protective step training. Aim 1 will test whether
perturbation training can improve protective stepping in people with PD with postural
dysfunction. Aim 2 will test whether improvements are retained over 2 months and generalize
to untrained perturbation tasks (which may be important for real world situations).
Importantly, investigators will also gather exploratory data regarding the effect of
perturbation training on falls. Aim 3 addresses the secondary goal of this project:
Determining for whom protective step training is most beneficial. Aim 3 will relate
behavioral factors and neuroimaging outcomes to the magnitude of improvement in protective
stepping. All aims will be tested in people with PD who have postural disturbances.

To complete these aims, participants will undergo 12 visits to the laboratory over the course
of about 5 months. These will include 6 "training visits" over the course of 2 weeks,
surrounded by 6 "assessment" visits before and after the training. During assessment visits,
investigators will assess the ability to step quickly in response to a loss of balance (e.g.
a slip), as well as thinking assessments and, if eligible, investigators will complete an
MRI. During training visits, investigators will train the ability to step quickly in response
to a slip.

In this study, participants will serve as their own controls. As such, there is no
randomization to multiple groups.

Inclusion Criteria:

- Neurologist diagnosed PD

- Postural Instability / Gait Dysfunction (PIGD)

- Ability to stand unaided for 5 minutes

Exclusion Criteria:

- non-PD related neurological pathology

- orthopedic impairments affecting balance
We found this trial at
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Phoenix, Arizona 85004
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Phoenix, AZ
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