The effect of combined motor and cognitive rehabilitation on motor performance in Parkinson's disease: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Luisa Cacciante, Alex Lando, Emine Gulden Ozcan and 6 others
PMID 42183599WHAT IT FOUND
Combined motor and cognitive training did not clearly improve functional mobility over motor training in Parkinson's disease.
Sequential protocols reported an improvement in daily activities; simultaneous protocols reported better quality of life, but evidence was limited.
Key findings
01Combined motor-cognitive training did not show a significant improvement in functional mobility compared with motor training alone, in either sequential or simultaneous protocols.
02Sequential combined motor-cognitive treatment showed an advantage over motor treatment alone for activities of daily living assessed with the UPDRS-II (mean difference -1.81).
03Simultaneous combined motor-cognitive treatment showed a quality-of-life advantage over motor treatment alone, but this was based on 2 studies with 34 participants.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTs
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 quantitative analyses included few studies and small participant numbers, especially for simultaneous treatment: 3 studies with 66 participants for functional mobility and 2 studies with 34 participants for quality of life. The included treatments varied widely in content, delivery, and dose, from 10 h to 100 h, so it is hard to know which specific combined program worked. Most studies had some concerns about risk of bias, particularly in the selection of reported results, which weakens confidence in the positive quality-of-life finding. The review included only English-language studies, which may have excluded relevant trials. The primary outcome was functional mobility, and it did not show a significant benefit for either sequential or simultaneous combined treatment.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the activities-of-daily-living or quality-of-life findings as proof that combined training improves mobility. The primary functional mobility analysis found no significant difference, and the positive secondary findings came from small numbers of studies: 3 studies with 128 participants for activities of daily living and 2 studies with 34 participants for quality of life.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →