Improving Gait Adaptability in Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia During Task-specific Training on the C-Mill: Towards Evidence-Based and Individually Tailored Rehabilitation

Hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP) is a relatively common, slowly progressive movement disorder that seriously impacts on gait capacity. Patients with HSP experience incremental muscle stiffness, muscle weakness and balance problems and, as a consequence, increasing difficulties to adjust their gait pattern to changing environmental demands. This is a major problem as such 'gait adaptability' is critical for independent and safe mobility in daily life. Impaired gait adaptability will also result in falls and fall-related injuries and reduce quality of life. Therefore, there is an urgent need for evidence-based rehabilitation interventions to improve gait adaptability in patients with HSP. Participants train gait adaptability via obstacle negotiation, precision stepping and unexpected accelerations and decelerations. The strategies are trained in a safe environment on the C-Mill, a treadmill providing augmented reality via visual and acoustic cues.

Objectives

This study aims to promote an essential step towards evidence-based and individually tailored gait rehabilitation in participants with hereditary spastic paraparesis. The objectives are twofold:

1. To study the effect of ten 1-hour sessions C-Mill training on gait adaptability in participants with pure-HSP.
2. To study the effect of ten 1-hour sessions C-Mill training on spatiotemporal and functional capacity parameters and to identify key-determinants of C-Mill training efficacy in participants with pure-HSP.

It is hypothesized that ten hours of context specific C-mill training is effective in improving gait adaptability in participants with pure HSP, as measured with the obstacle subtask of the emory functional ambulation profile (E-FAP).