The effect of dual-task interference on postural sway and hand flexibility in early Parkinson's disease / 中华行为医学与脑科学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To observe the effect of dual-task interference on postural sway and hand flexibility of patients with early Parkinson's disease (PD).Methods Twenty-tree patients with early PD and twcnty-three healthy,sex-and age-matched control subjects were examined.Postural sway was measured with an accelerometer at the centre of mass at the lower spine.Two parameters of postural sway were computed from the acceleration signals including root mean square acceleration (RMS) and jerkiness of sway (JERK).Purdue pegboard test,single-task tests and dual-task test were performed respectively to record the numbers of nails inserted with left hand,right hand and both hands within 30 seconds.Results In the usual conditions,no significant differences of postural sway parameters were found between the control group and PD group in eye open and eye closed condition.In dualtask condition,PD patients showed an increase of RMS values (eye open conditionsPD group (0.156±0.112) m/s2,control group (0.086±0.026) m/s2;eye closed conditionsPD group (0.204±0.162)m/s2,control group (0.095±0.023)m/s2) of sway acceleration,compared with control subjects (P＜0.01).These differences reached significance during cognitive task performance in eye open and eye closed with dual task.PD patients showed larger JERK values with increasing difficulty of the sway task which also reached significance during cognitive task performance(P＜0.05).The number of pegs inserted within 30 s in patients with PD (17.33±4.87)was significantly lower than that in controls (20.77±4.13) (P＜0.05).Conclusion The hand flexibility of patients with early PD obviously decrease.The balance of patients with early PD may deteriorate when their attention is diverted or reduced because of attempting to perform cognitive tasks.