Physical Activity and Fitness Levels of Individuals With Ataxia: A Cross-Sectional Study.
Scott Barbuto, Seonjoo Lee, Joel Stein and 5 others
PMID 37380120WHAT IT FOUND
Most people with ataxia in this study were sedentary, and those who were active had higher fitness.
In sedentary people, lower fitness tracked with more severe ataxia, but the study cannot show activity changes ataxia.
Key findings
01Twenty-eight of 42 participants were sedentary, and 14 were at least minimally physically active.
02The physically active group had higher VO2 max, maximal work, maximal heart rate, and anaerobic threshold than the sedentary group, with p values reported as less than 0.001, 0.006, 0.019, and 0.04.
03In the sedentary group, higher fitness was associated with lower ataxia severity, while in the active group there was no relationship between fitness and ataxia severity.
STILL TO COME
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What it does not show
The participants came from people who agreed to join a home exercise study, so they may not represent people with ataxia who are unwilling to exercise or unable to walk. The sample had 42 participants and included multiple ataxia types without enough people per type to account for subtype differences. The sample size was not based on a power calculation; it was set by how many people were recruited during the 2022 calendar year for the parent interventional study. It was cross-sectional, so it cannot show whether exercise improves fitness or whether higher fitness reduces ataxia severity. Physical activity was measured by self-report over the last 7 days, which can be affected by recall and overestimation. The sex difference in activity was not statistically significant, so it should not be read as a reliable finding. People who could not walk independently for more than 10 meters were excluded, so results do not cover people with greater walking impairment.
Declared interests
The article metadata lists NIH extramural research support. The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest. Disclosures include clinical trial funding from BrainQ and consulting fees from Medrhythms for Dr. Joel Stein, and royalties from the Dependence Scale license and consulting fees from Eisai, Lilly, and Arcadia for Dr. Yaakov Stern. The other authors have nothing to disclose.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that exercise improves fitness or reduces ataxia severity from this paper. It is a cross-sectional study that did not test an exercise intervention, so the association between activity and fitness cannot establish cause.