{"id":4111,"date":"2023-12-18T15:28:04","date_gmt":"2023-12-18T19:28:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/biomechanics-in-the-wild\/?p=4111"},"modified":"2023-12-18T15:28:05","modified_gmt":"2023-12-18T19:28:05","slug":"how-is-biomechanics-used-in-the-treatment-of-parkinsons-disease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/biomechanics-in-the-wild\/2023\/12\/18\/how-is-biomechanics-used-in-the-treatment-of-parkinsons-disease\/","title":{"rendered":"How is Biomechanics Used in the Treatment of Parkinson’s Disease?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Parkinson\u2019s disease<\/a> is the second most common neurodegenerative disease with 90,000 Americans being diagnosed every year<\/a>.\u00a0 Parkinson\u2019s is a difficult disease to detect; there are no blood or lab test to diagnosis it.\u00a0 Diagnoses are symptom based. Parkinson\u2019s patients often do not know they have the disease until after having dealt with it for years. Some of the early symptoms<\/a> such as facial masking (lack of facial expression), small handwriting, or speaking softly do not directly point to a Parkinson’s disease diagnoses.\u00a0 A patient comes in with tremors, muscle rigidity, poor balance, and slowed movements and are then assumed to have Parkinson’s disease.\u00a0 If their symptoms improve with medication, the diagnosis is confirmed.\u00a0 Biomechanics is a useful tool in the evaluation of the progression of the disease as well as its continued treatment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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Image of a man with Parkinson’s walking.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

One use of biomechanics in the treatment of Parkinson\u2019s disease is the analyses of the patient’s gait.\u00a0 Gait is the manner that a person walks, and there is \u201chealthy\u201d gait and problematic gait.\u00a0 Biomechanics, more specifically, kinematics, can be used to determine how far a person\u2019s walking pattern deviates from the \u201chealthy\u201d gait.\u00a0 Kinematics is the study of motion through things like position, velocity, and acceleration. In the paper \u201cThe biomechanics of motor control of gait in Parkinson’s disease,”<\/a> the many papers looking at gait biomechanics are compared.\u00a0 It was found that those with Parkinson\u2019s had a gait that significantly deviated from the normal person\u2019s gait.\u00a0 Their stride length and speed was decreased, which decreased their overall walking speed.\u00a0 This causes the patient to shuffle their feet, which increases their risks of falling.\u00a0 One factor they looked at when analyzing gait kinematics was whether or not the subject was on medications for the disease.\u00a0In studies where the patients were on medication,\u00a0 there was not a significant increase in stride length or speed compared to without medication.\u00a0 All of these studies only compared straight line walking, which is not representative of what someone with Parkinson\u2019s needs to navigate on a day to day basis.\u00a0 The paper suggests that further research of Parkinson\u2019s gait needs to include things such as stopping and turning to provide more applicable results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biomechanics is also used to look at posture, especially during the gait cycle, and the postural instability that those with Parkinson\u2019s develop.\u00a0 Postural instability can lead to injuries and falls, which become more dangerous as people age.\u00a0 In a paper by Molly A. McVey et. al<\/a> , different biomechanical variables, such as center of pressure (the point in the foot that undergoes the most force when walking) and joint kinematics (joint motion) are evaluated to see if there is connection between them and the patient\u2019s postural instability. Further research is needed, but the study showed that Parkinsons affects movement significantly.\u00a0 With how hard Parkinson\u2019s is to diagnose, further research in this area may provide some different factors to look at for diagnoses, and diagnoses will hopefully start to happen earlier on in the disease progression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gait and posture are only two of the the many things biomechanics can be used to evaluate and treat in Parkinson’s disease. As Parkinson’s disease largely affects motor skills, biomechanics is a useful tool in seeing how movement is restricted or uncontrolled as the disease progresses. As patients try more treatments, medications, and therapies, biomechanics can provide data to show improvement or decline to give doctors a cohesive look of the patients health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further Reading: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rigidity in Parkinson\u2019s disease: evidence from biomechanical and neurophysiological measures<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The biomechanics and motor control of gait in Parkinson disease <\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early biomechanical markers of postural instability in Parkinson’s disease<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Parkinson\u2019s disease is the second most common neurodegenerative disease with 90,000 Americans being diagnosed every year.\u00a0 Parkinson\u2019s is a difficult disease to detect; there are no blood or lab test to diagnosis it.\u00a0 Diagnoses are symptom based. Parkinson\u2019s patients often do not know they have the disease until after having dealt with it for years. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4729,"featured_media":4304,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[505545],"tags":[10366,505468,68085],"class_list":["post-4111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2023-fall","tag-brain","tag-neurological-disease-disorders","tag-walking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/biomechanics-in-the-wild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/biomechanics-in-the-wild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/biomechanics-in-the-wild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/biomechanics-in-the-wild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4729"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/biomechanics-in-the-wild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4111"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/biomechanics-in-the-wild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4286,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/biomechanics-in-the-wild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4111\/revisions\/4286"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/biomechanics-in-the-wild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/biomechanics-in-the-wild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/biomechanics-in-the-wild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/biomechanics-in-the-wild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}