Comparing the Effect of Aquatic-Based Exercise vs. Land-Based Exercise on Functional Movement and Physical Performance in Down Syndrome Youth: Experimental Study

Down syndrome, frequently abbreviated as DS, is a chromosomal disorder whereby a baby is born with an additional copy of chromosome 21. Down syndrome youth have been found to present with a limitation of balance, coordination, as well as the loss of gross motor and fine motor skills. This study aimed to establish the difference between the impact of aquatic-based exercises versus exercises performed on land on practical exercises involving functional movements and physical performance among Libyan young with Down Syndrome. The study involved 14 intellectually disabled individuals from two care centers in Tripoli, Libya. They were equally divided into 2 groups. All patients followed the physiotherapy program based on exercise and aquatic therapy for 1 hour, 3 times a week for 1 month. For the exercise intervention, the subjects were advised not to engage in the rest forms of exercise training. For all participants’ functional fitness capacity, pre-tests were performed before the start of the intervention. The measures of functional fitness capacity were: body composition, weight and height, gait speed test, 10-meter walk test, balance test, single leg stance -eye opened/closed, muscle endurance of the upper body muscles, 1-minute push-ups, physical performance, and aerobic capacity; 100-meter timed test. All received data were processed statistically with Microsoft Excel (2020); p-values of various tests were used to determine the statistical significance (e.g., balance, coordination, lung capacity), to find out the differences in performance before and after the training. The level of significance was set at 0.05. data showed that the aqua therapy provided good improvement on the muscles related to gait speed(P=0.00004), muscle endurance(P=0.004) and aerobic capacity(P=0.00000186), a significant difference was observed for single leg stance test with eye closed (P= 0.0001) eye opened (P= 0.0003) in Favor to Land based exercise group. The study concluded that Aquatic-based exercise has a clear effect on physical performance and functional movement in youth with Down syndrome.