Article

Objective measures of postural control that are sensitive to Parkinson's disease
(PD) progression would improve patient care and accelerate clinical trials.
Although measures of postural sway during quiet stance in untreated PD have been
shown to differ from age-matched control subjects, it is not known if sway
measures change with disease progression in early PD.
In this pilot study, we
asked whether accelerometer-based metrics of sway could provide a practical tool
for monitoring progression of postural dyscontrol in people with untreated or
newly treated PD. We examined 13 subjects with PD and 12 healthy, age-matched
control subjects. The PD subjects had been recently diagnosed and had not started
any antiparkinsonian medications at the baseline session. All subjects were
tested 3-6 months and 12 months after the baseline session. Subjects were asked
to stand quietly for two minutes while wearing an inertial sensor on their
posterior trunk that measured trunk linear acceleration. Our results suggested
that objective sway measures deteriorated over one year despite minimal changes
in UPDRS motor scores. Medio-lateral (ML) sway measures were more sensitive than
antero-posterior sway measures in detecting progression. The ML JERK was larger
in the PD group than the control group across all three testing sessions. The ML
sway dispersion and ML sway velocity were also significantly higher in PD
compared to control subjects by the 12-month evaluation. It is feasible to
measure progression of PD prior to onset of treatment using accelerometer-based
measures of quiet standing.
CI - Copyright (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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