Journal of Alzheimers Disease & Parkinsonism
Open Access

Research Article

Postural Instability in the ML Direction in Individuals with Parkinson's Disease Before, During and when Recovering from a Forward Reach

School of Human Kinetics, University of Ottawa, 125 rue Université, Pavillon Montpetit, MNT 353, Ottawa, Canada

*Corresponding Author:

Julie Nantel
Assistant Professor, School of Human Kinetics
Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Ottawa
125 University, MNT 353 Ottawa, Canada, K1N 6N5
Tel: 613-562-5800
E-mail: jnantel@uottawa.ca

Received Date: September 20, 2016; Accepted Date: September 28, 2016; Published Date: October 05, 2016

Citation: Porter S, Dalton C, Nantel J (2016) Postural Instability in the ML Direction in Individuals with Parkinson’s Disease Before, During and when Recovering from a Forward Reach. J Alzheimers Dis Parkinsonism 6:267. doi: 10.4172/2161-0460.1000267

Copyright: © 2016 Porter S, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Reaching forward requires preparing and regulating the trunk progression to avoid falling, but also controlling balance when recovering from it. Objective: To measure postural stability in individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and healthy older adults before, during and when recovering from a Forward Reach Task (FRT). Methods: Nineteen PD (Dx: 5.3 ± 3.8 years; Hoehn and Yahr, 1-3) and sixteen older adults performed the FRT on a force platform and completed the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MOCA) and self-reported falls (12 months). Center of pressure displacement variability (CoP) and CoP velocity (VCoP) were calculated before (T1), during (T2), and after (T3) reaching. Correlations assessed the relationship between postural stability during these periods, FRT, falls and MOCA scores. Results: Variability in CoP T2 medial-lateral (ML), velocity T1 and T3, p<0.05 were larger in PD compared to Controls. In anterior-posterior (AP) velocity in T1, p<0.05 and T2, p<0.001 and variability in CoP T3 were larger in controls than in PD, p<0.05. In PD, FRT distance was correlated with ML CoP T1 (r=-0.73, p<0.001), CoP T2, T3 (r=-0.59, p<0.01). Conclusion: Older adults showed postural instability in the main direction of the task (AP) whereas those with PD were mostly unstable in the ML direction. In PD, the large contribution of postural control in ML was correlated with decreased reach distance, increased number of falls and disease duration. Altogether this highlights that individuals with PD and more so fallers, rely heavily on postural control in the ML direction before, during and when recovering from a forward reach.

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