Abstract
Parkinson's disease (PD) is a movement disorder marked by gait impairments. Traditional exercise, such as aerobic training, has shown improvements to movement initiation and gait, but has limited effect on disease severity. Conversely, novel exercise treatments, such as Sensory Attention Focused Exercise (PD SAFEx™), improve disease severity, but show no changes to gait. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the combination of aerobic training and PD SAFEx™ on gait parameters and disease severity. PD participants (n=71) were randomly assigned into 3 groups: PD SAFEx™ (60 min of sensory training); ½ PD SAFEx (30 min of sensory training); Aerobic+PD SAFEx (A-PD SAFEx) (30 min of sensory and 30 min of aerobic training). All groups exercised 3x/week for 12 weeks. Outcome measures included the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale motor score (UPDRS III), and gait parameters (velocity, cadence and step length), which were recorded pre and post exercise. No improvements on gait were observed for any group and only PD SAFEx™ significantly improved disease severity (F(2,68)=5.35), p<0.01). The results show that the combination of aerobic training and PD SAFEx™ has no beneficial effect on disease severity or gait. Whereas PD SAFEx™ alone shows improvement to disease severity, but not gait. This suggests sensory training is a viable technique to treat disease severity, but other types of exercise need to be explored to address gait impairments.Acknowledgments: Sun Life Financial and Canadian Foundation for Innovation