Aging and Mixed Perturbation Training to Reduce Falls in Locomotion

Summary

The long-term objective of this research is to develop an efficacious training paradigm to enhance older adults' defense mechanisms against falls and possibility reduce healthcare cost. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates the direct medical cost for fall related injuries to be $30 billion annually. Slips and trips combined account for more than 50% of the outdoor falls in community-dwelling older adults. These environmental perturbations are opposing in nature, with slips mainly resulting in backward falls and trips in forward falls. This project explores perturbation training through both slip and trip exposure based on the principles of motor learning. The project design consists of a randomized controlled trial to examine the ability of the central nervous system to mitigate the interference in stability control (if any) that is induced by opposing types of perturbations. It also introduces a novel combined slip and trip perturbation training paradigm to enhance one's ability to retain and generalize the acquired fall-prevention skills to both types of falls. Slips and trips induced on an over ground walkway will be used to prepare the motor system to improve stability control and vertical limb support to resist falls. The longer-term benefits of such combined perturbation training over exclusive slip-only or trip-only perturbation training in reducing both laboratory-induced and real life falls will also be assessed. The hypothesis of this study if supported by the results will provide an evidence-supported training protocol to reduce the fall-risk among community-dwelling older adults.

Conditions

• Older Adults

Interventions

OTHER

Slip-only training

Subjects in this arm will receive overground, slip specific perturbation training only. The total perturbation training trials received by this group will be 24 but the protocol will consist of a total of 70-75 trials (to match the training length and time of Combined slip and trip training group).

OTHER

Trip-only training

Subjects in this arm consisting of a total of 24 trials of trip specific training delivered in an identical sequence (mixed with non-trip trials) as the Group with slip only training.

OTHER

Combined slip+trip training

Subjects in this arm will receive training consisting of repeated exposure to both slips and trips with a total of 24 slips plus 24 trips to keep the number of trials of each perturbation same as the perturbation specific training groups (slip only and trip only), however, the total dose will be doubled. The total trials walked (perturbed + unperturbed) will be 75.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• National Institute on Aging (NIA)

  collaborator NIH

• University of Illinois at Chicago

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Tanvi Bhatt, PhD PT · University of Illinois at Chicago

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

60 Years

Max Age

90 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2017-08-01

Primary Completion

2025-12-31

Completion

2025-12-31

Countries

• United States

Study Locations