Gender Differences Of Perturbation Treadmill Training On Balance, Fall Risk, And Neuromuscular Adaptation In Aging Adults: Intervention Study

PURPOSE: Determining the presence of a relationship between gender and fall risk in aging adults could prove a valuable resource for personalized prevention and rehabilitation care. We hypothesized that aging women would show greater improvement over the 8 weeks than aging men, but that there would be a larger gap between younger women and older women than with men. METHODS: This study was performed using a perturbation treadmill and an individualized training protocol that tracked improvements and adapted to user performance. Thirty older adults (68 yrs ± 8), and thirty college-aged (20 yrs ± 1) control subjects, completed eight sessions across 4 weeks on the perturbation treadmill. Functional assessments were performed pre and post intervention in order to measure changes in balance and strength, etc. Reaction time during continuous trials was tracked throughout all 8 sessions to understand neuromuscular adaptations. ANOVA testing was used to analyze results. RESULTS: Preliminary results show significant improvements (p < 0.05) on the sit to stand pre vs post test among only aging women. Furthermore, trends in the pre-post data show that the gap in improvement in older women vs younger women is larger than in men. However, there were no other significant differences in pre-post testing based on gender. Reaction time in aging men had significant improvement (p < 0.05) from the first to last session on the continuous slips assessment. CONCLUSION: Overall this perturbation treadmill protocol is clinically effective across genders. We recommend, based on these findings, that perturbation treadmill training be used in the clinical setting for both aging men and women to reduce fall risk and strengthen neuromuscular adaptation.