Article

Freezing of gait is a paroxysmal and disabling symptom that commonly affects
patients in the latter stages of Parkinson's disease, however the intermittent
nature of this symptom makes it difficult to study in the clinical setting. Our
research group has previously reported a correlation between self-reported
freezing of gait symptoms and performance on a seated virtual reality gait task.
In this study, we sought to determine whether behavioral measures recorded on
this task were correlated with actual clinical measures of freezing of gait
recorded in a cohort of 38 Parkinson's disease patients whilst in their
clinically defined 'off' state. Firstly, patients with freezing of gait had a
significantly larger frequency of spontaneous motor arrests recorded on the
virtual reality gait task than 'non-freezers'. In addition, in those 24 patients
with clinically proven freezing of gait, the number and percentage of time spent
with freezing on the virtual reality task were both moderately correlated with
the duration of freezing of gait recorded on the timed up-and-go tasks. These
findings suggest that the freezing behavior observed during a virtual reality
gait task may share similar neural substrates to freezing of gait. Such a
relationship could offer a potential avenue for modeling the phenomenon of
freezing of gait in Parkinson's disease, allowing for the exploration of the
neural correlates of freezing.
CI - Crown Copyright (c) 2012. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Langue : ANGLAIS