European Commission.

No abstract

Common and disease-specific changes in free-living Macro and Micro gait highlight generic and selective targets for intervention depending on type of faller (OA-PD). Our findings support free-living monitoring to enhance assessment. Future work is needed to confirm the optimal battery of measures, sensitivity to change and value for fall prediction.

No abstract

Recent work suggests that wearables can augment conventional measures of Parkinson's disease (PD). We evaluated the relationship between conventional measures of disease and motor severity (e.g., MDS-UPDRS part III), laboratory-based measures of gait and balance, and daily-living physical activity measures in patients with PD. Methods: Data from 125 patients (age: 71.7 ± 6.5 years, Hoehn and Yahr: 1-3, 60.5% men) were analyzed. The MDS-UPDRS-part III was used as the gold standard of motor symptom severity. Gait and balance were quantified in the laboratory. Daily-living gait and physical activity metrics were extracted from an accelerometer worn on the lower back for 7 days. Results: In multivariate analyses, daily-living physical activity and gait metrics, laboratory-based balance, demographics and subject characteristics together explained 46% of the variance in MDS-UPDRS-part III scores. Daily-living measures accounted for 62% of the explained variance, laboratory measures 30%, and demographics and subject characteristics 7% of the explained variance. Conversely, demographics and subject characteristics, laboratory-based measures of gait symmetry, and motor symptom severity together explained less than 30% of the variance in total daily-living physical activity. MDS-UPDRS-part III scores accounted for 13% of the explained variance, i.e., < 4% of all the variance in total daily-living activity. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that conventional measures of motor symptom severity do not strongly reflect daily-living activity and that daily-living measures apparently provide important information that is not captured in a conventional one-time, laboratory assessment of gait, balance or the MDS-UPDRS. To provide a more complete evaluation, wearable devices should be considered.