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ObjectivesTo investigate if digital measures of gait (walking and turning) collected passively over a week of daily activities in people with Parkinson's disease (PD) increases the discriminative ability to predict future falls compared to fall history alone.MethodsWe recruited 34 individuals with PD (17 with history of falls and 17 non-fallers), age: 68 ± 6 years, MDS-UPDRS III ON: 31 ± 9. Participants were classified as fallers (at least one fall) or non-fallers based on self-reported falls in past 6 months. Eighty digital measures of gait were derived from 3 inertial sensors (Opal® V2 System) placed on the feet and lower back for a week of passive gait monitoring. Logistic regression employing a “best subsets selection strategy” was used to find combinations of measures that discriminated future fallers from non-fallers, and the Area Under Curve (AUC). Participants were followed via email every 2 weeks over the year after the study for self-reported falls.ResultsTwenty-five subjects reported falls in the follow-up year. Quantity of gait and turning measures (e.g., number of gait bouts and turns per hour) were similar in future fallers and non-fallers. The AUC to discriminate future fallers from non-fallers using fall history alone was 0.77 (95% CI: [0.50–1.00]). In contrast, the highest AUC for gait and turning digital measures with 4 combinations was 0.94 [0.84–1.00]. From the top 10 models (all AUCs>0.90) via the best subsets strategy, the most consistently selected measures were variability of toe-out angle of the foot (9 out of 10), pitch angle of the foot during mid-swing (8 out of 10), and peak turn velocity (7 out of 10).ConclusionsThese findings highlight the importance of considering precise digital measures, captured via sensors strategically placed on the feet and low back, to quantify several different aspects of gait (walking and turning) during daily life to improve the classification of future fallers in PD.

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-nnr-10.1177_15459683221119757 for Effects of a Cognitively Challenging Agility Boot Camp Program on Balance and Gait in People With Parkinson’s Disease: Does Freezing of Gait Status Matter? by Vrutangkumar V. Shah, Rodrigo Vitorio, Naoya Hasegawa, Patricia Carlson-Kuhta, John G. Nutt, Laurie A. King, Martina Mancini and Fay B. Horak in Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair

Additional file 1. Table S1. Gait measures and definitions.