Does prolonged walking in daily-life alter fall-related gait quality in community-dwelling older adults?

Introduction

Physical activity, including prolonged walking, is encouraged for all ages. Nonetheless, both inactive and highly active older adults show an increased risk of falling, particularly when engaged in bouted activities of ten minutes or more. This suggests that prolonged walking might increase fall risk in older adults. A potential contributing factor is a decline in gait quality, possibly due to exercise-induced fatigue. We investigated whether gait quality changes during daily-life prolonged walking in community-dwelling older adults. As we expect physically active older adults to be less fatigable, we also investigated whether their physical activity level (PAL) affects the expected changes in gait quality.

Method

Gait quality, gait quantity and PAL data of 229 older adults (mean age 76 years, 76% female) were collected using tri-axial inertial sensors worn on the lower back for one week. Long walking bouts (≥10 minutes) were extracted, and gait quality measures, including local dynamic stability and walking speed, were calculated for every ten seconds of these walking bouts. A mixed-linear-model was performed to analyse the relation between walking duration, gait quality, and walking speed, including sensor-based PAL as a moderator.

Results

From this cohort, 319 walking bouts (≥10minutes) were extracted. We found no significant change in walking speed, nor in gait stability over time during walking episodes of up to sixteen minutes. PAL did not moderate the relation between walking duration and gait stability.

Conclusion

Our preliminary findings suggest that, in real-world conditions, gait stability remains consistent during walking bouts of up to sixteen minutes, and this was not affected by changes in gait speed, nor by participant’s PAL. Additional cohort data, and additional gait quality parameters are currently analysed to further explore the effect of prolonged walking on daily-life gait quality parameters.