Concurrent Validity of Dual-Task Walking Speed With CERAD-NP Assessment Battery in Community-Dwelling Older Adults.
Han Suk Lee, Mansoo Ko, Hyung-Ji Kim
PMID 38163023WHAT IT FOUND
Older adults with lower CERAD scores walked slower, especially while counting backward on a straight path.
This dual-task walk may help flag cognitive decline, but it does not diagnose it.
Key findings
01Walking speed was positively correlated with CERAD-NP Total II scores for all 8 walking tasks.
02Straight-path walking while counting backward (.698) and straight-path walking while crossing obstacles (.697) were strongly correlated with Total II scores.
03After controlling for age and education, straight-path walking while counting backward was significantly related to Total II score (β=.350, P=.022).
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study was cross-sectional, so it shows an association at one time point, not that walking speed predicts or causes cognitive decline. The authors state the sample size was small and reduced generalizability. Participants were not grouped by the cause of cognitive decline, such as dementia or Alzheimer disease. The study did not account for deconditioning factors that may affect walking speed. It relied only on walking speed, not other gait measures such as stride time, double support time, step width, or cadence. Of 195 initially recruited, 32 dropped out for reasons including stroke, Parkinson's disease, walking instability, and missing cognitive test data, which may limit applicability to people with those conditions.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat slower dual-task walking as proof of cognitive decline. The study only showed correlations in cross-sectional data, and it did not show that a slower walk causes or diagnoses cognitive decline.