Efficacy of Brisk Walking in Parkinson's Disease

To evaluate dynamic balance in four domains: anticipatory postural adjustments, postural reactions, sensory integration and gait stability. The miniBEST scores range from 0 to 28, with a higher score indicates better dynamic balance.

The maximum walking distance covered during a validated six-minute walk test (6MWT) to document participants' aerobic endurance level and walking capacity

This score consists of 18 items in 33 questions examining the motor and functional capacity of people with Parkinson's disease by the assessor. Each question will be rated from 0 (normal) to 4 (severe). The MDS-UPDRS-III score ranges from 0 to 132, with higher scores indicating more severe motor and functional impairments

The single-task gait speed measured by a 10-meter walking test in a fast pace

The dual-task gait performance measured by a 3-meter timed up and go test with serial subtraction

This score assesses the non-motor aspects of experiences of daily living in people with Parkinson's disease with a total of 13 questions. The score will be administered by assessor asking participants about their behaviors and non-motor symptoms such as cognitive impairment, hallucination, depressive and anxious mood, sleep, pain, urinary and constipation problems, and fatigue etc. Each question will be rated from 0 (normal) to 4 (severe). The MDS-UPDRS-I score ranges from 0 to 52, with higher scores indicating more severe non-motor impairment.

The ABC score will be used to measure the participants' perceived level of balance confidence in 16 indoor and outdoor activities. Each activity is rated from 0-100 (0 indicates no confidence and 100 indicates full confidence, total score=1600). The total score is converted into percentage score ranging from 0 to 100%, with a higher ABC score indicating a higher level of balance confidence.

It is a health-related quality-of-life outcome measure that contains 39 self-reported items on eight domains, i.e.: mobility [#1-10], activities of daily living [#11-16], emotional well-being [#17-22], stigma [#23-26], social support [#27-29], cognition [#30-33], communication [#34-36], and body discomfort [#37-39]. The PDQ-39 has been translated into Chinese and validated for local use. Each item is scored on 5-point Likert-type scales ranging from 0 (never), 1 (occasionally), 2 (sometimes), and 3 (often) to 4 (always) based on their perception on the item over the past month. The PDQ-39 total score is 156 and the PDQ-39 summary index is created by summing all eight of the PDQ-39 domains and standardizing the score on a scale of 0-100%. A lower PDQ-39 summary index score reflects a better health-related quality-of-life.

The risk of falling of each group will be determined by the ratio of non-fallers to fallers at treatment completion and 6-month follow-up. A lower risk ratio indicates a lower risk of falling.

The fall rate (times of fall per year per person) of each group at treatment completion and 6-month follow-up will be calculated with the following formula:

Number of fall events X12 / (Number of months spent to assemble fall data X number of subjects)

A lower fall rate indicates a better effect on fall reduction.

The risk of injurious falling of each group at treatment completion and 6-month follow-up will be determined by the ratio of injurious non-fallers to injurious fallers. A lower injurious risk ratio indicates a lower risk of injurious falling.

The injurious fall rate (times of injurious fall per year per person) of each group at treatment completion and 6-month follow-up will be calculated with the following formula:

Number of injurious fall events X12 / (Number of months spent to collect injurious fall data X number of subjects)

A lower injurious fall rate indicates a better effect on injurious fall reduction.