ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Neurol.
Sec. Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fneur.2025.1657884
This article is part of the Research TopicPsychiatric Comorbidities of Neurogenetic and Neurodegenerative DiseasesView all 4 articles
Stage-Specific Efficacy of Pharmacological Interventions on Gait Impairments in Parkinson's Disease
Provisionally accepted
- 1Xuanwu Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China
- 2Beijing Tsinghua Changgung Hospital, Beijing, China
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Objective This study aims to clarify the variations and the therapeutic effects of medicine on gait by analyzing the gait characteristics before and after medication in various stages of Parkinson's disease (PD). Methods This prospective study included 60 patients with PD [Hoehn-Yahr (H-Y) stage 1-4] at the department of Neurology of Beijing Tsinghua Changgung Hospital, and 30 gender and age - matched healthy controls. The ReadyGo system was used to record gait parameters. The levodopa challenge test was applied to assess the therapeutic effect of medicine on gait. Results We observed a shorter stride length and stride height, a longer stride time and turn-around time, and a reduction of stride speed in the PD group compared with the healthy control group significantly. No significant changes were noted in the variability of stride parameters (stride frequency variability and stride length variability). The radar chart demonstrated a gradual decline in gait parameters as the disease progressed. Compared to healthy control group, significant differences in stride speed and stride time were observed from H-Y stage 1 (p < 0.05) while stride length, stride width, and turn-around time were from H-Y stage 2 (p < 0.05), and step height is H-Y stage 3 (p < 0.05). After administering levodopa, there was a marked improvement in stride speed (p = 0.009) and turn-around time (p = 0.005). The most notable improvements in stride speed and turn-around time occurred at H-Y stage 3. Improvements in non-gait domains were more notable across all stages of PD patients than gait domains.Conclusion Gait changes can serve as a new early diagnosis marker for PD because of the early significant change in gait parameters especially on stride speed and stride time. As the disease advances, various gait parameters gradually deteriorate, suggesting that objective gait monitoring can provide a reference method to dynamically observe PD progression. Unlike the previous view that medicine has limited effect on gait, this study found that although the effect of medicine on gait is not as remarkable as that on tremor and rigidity, medicine can still effectively improve gait, especially in the patients with advanced PD.
Keywords: Parkinson Disease, Gait Disorders, gait domain, Video capture technology, advanced PD
Received: 02 Jul 2025; Accepted: 19 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhang, chen and Li. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jun Li, lja02243@btch.edu.cn
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