Our colleagues from Tel Aviv, the TASMC Mobilisers, studied the quality of walking of people with multiple sclerosis and healthy controls in two environments: a) a well-structured laboratory setting and b) during real-life, everyday walking using 24/7 monitoring.
During every-day walking, the patients took fewer steps, they walked more slowly, and the quality of their gait pattern was reduced compared to the control subjects. Interestingly, the differences between the walking of the patients and the controls during real-life were not just a simple reflection of the changes that were seen in the lab. This supports the idea that measurement in the real-world provides added value as compared to conventional testing. In addition, the findings suggest that at least two distinct mechanisms contributed to the real-life walking patterns of the patients. These results may be used as targets for monitoring disease severity and the response to treatment and rehabilitation in people with multiple sclerosis.
Read the full paper here.
