Estimated lower speed boundary at which the walk ratio constancy is broken in healthy adults.
Rumi Murakami, Yohei Otaka
PMID 28533617WHAT IT FOUND
Healthy adults' walk ratio stayed constant until about 62 m/min.
Below that, cadence, not step length, marked the shift. Very slow walking may use different control.
Key findings
01In 21 healthy adults, walk ratio constancy was broken at slow speeds, with the boundary estimated at about 62 m/min.
02The separation between normal and slow walking was clearer for cadence than for step length.
03In the slow-walk cluster, walk ratio correlated negatively with speed and cadence, while in the normal-walk cluster it did not correlate with other gait parameters.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
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What it does not show
The heel-strike point was identified visually, so small measurement bias may affect the boundary. Only temporal-distance factors were studied, so the mechanism remains unexplored. The sample was small and narrow in age, so it may not represent older adults or patients. The study was done in healthy adults, so it does not show how patients with stroke or multiple sclerosis walk.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest and no source of funding.
The easy way to misread this
Do not use the estimated boundary as a clinical cutoff for patients. It was measured in healthy young adults under verbal instructions, and the paper says pathological slow walking needs further study.