The Influence of Peripheral Neuropathy on Walking Kinematics and Physical Education

摘要

IntroductionThe relationship between peripheral neuropathy (PN), physical disability, and falls has warranted investigation into the effects of this prevalent and debilitating disorder on walking. As individuals with PN often present with manyadditional ailments and alterations, we have examined the influence of acute, selective loss of plantar sensation on kinematic markers of locomotor system health in young healthy adults in experiment one. The variability and local instability associated with lower-extremity kinematics were computed as participants walked on a motorized treadmill. With these results in hand, a similar protocol was utilized in the second experiment to determine the influence-of PN on the same kinematic markers obtained from treadmill walking at relatively slow and fast speeds. The last experiment reported here has explored the clinical usefulness of these markers of locomotor system health by examining their relationship to widely-employed tests of locomotion-based physical function (LBPF). We will discuss the results of these experiments briefly in the rest of this paper.