Mobility in Daily Life and Falls in Parkinson’s Disease: Potential for Rehabilitation

Description

The goal of this intervention is to explore the effectiveness of a Turning Intervention (TURN-IT) to improve quality of turning in participants with Parkinson’s Disease (PD). An unique exercise program has been developed – TURN-IT – in which participants practice exercises that focus on physiological constraints that impair turning ability, such as axial rigidity, narrow base of support, bradykinesia, and inflexible set-shifting. The 60 participants with PD and a history of falls in the previous 12 months, will be randomized into a 6-week, 3x/week, one-on-one TURN-IT group or No-Intervention Control group. This pilot intervention study will determine the number of subjects needed for a future clinical trial and will determine the sensitivity to change with rehabilitation our daily-life turning quality measures (such as, mean and variability of number of steps to turn, turn amplitude, turn velocity). The investigators predict that the TURN-IT program will improve turning in daily life enough to justify a larger clinical trial.