Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disorder that causes motor impairments such as hand tremors and difficulty walking, and the number of patients has been rapidly increasing in recent years. A study has found that signs of Parkinson’s disease may appear in a person’s “gait” several years before they are diagnosed with the disease.
Real-world gait changes preceding Parkinson’s disease diagnosis in a population-scale UK biobank cohort | Journal of Neural Transmission | Springer Nature Link
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00702-026-03256-3
Something in The Way You Walk Changes Up to 7 Years Before a Parkinson's Diagnosis : ScienceAlert
https://www.sciencealert.com/subtle-changes-in-how-you-walk-may-signal-parkinsons-nearly-7-years-early
Normally, when walking, a person swings their right arm forward while stepping their left foot forward, and swings their left arm forward while stepping their right foot forward. This movement helps counteract twisting of the body during walking, but in people with Parkinson’s disease, this coordinated movement of the legs and arms is impaired, making it more difficult to walk.
This time, a research team from the University of New South Wales in Australia investigated how soon Parkinson’s disease begins to affect walking. The team used data fromUK Biobank, a large-scale biobank in the United Kingdom.
Recruitment for UK Biobank took place between 2006 and 2010, with approximately 500,000 volunteers aged 40 to 69 at enrollment participating. More than 100,000 of them wore wrist-worn wearable devices for seven days between 2013 and 2015, with acceleration data being measured. The research team investigated the relationship between later diagnoses of Parkinson’s disease and walking among the 73,413 participants who provided analyzable data.
Among the participants whose data were measured using wearable devices, 314 were diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease during a maximum follow-up period of 10 years. The research team said it used software called “Watch Walk” to analyze the accelerometer data.
The research team used Watch Walk to extract digital gait biomarkers, including “number of steps and walking time per day,” “usual and maximum walking speed,” “gait quality,” “proportion of fragmented walking bouts of 8 seconds or less or continuous walking bouts of 60 seconds or more,” and “hand position during walking.”
After examining the relationship between the digital gait biomarkers and subsequent diagnoses of Parkinson’s disease, the researchers found a substantial difference: those who were diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease within 40 months of the data measurement averaged approximately 4,000 steps per day, whereas those who were not diagnosed averaged approximately 6,400 steps per day.It was also found that, the later a person was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, the smaller the difference in step count at the time the data were measured. Among participants who were subsequently diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, maximum walking speed tended to be lower, and differences were also observed in walking rhythm and the proportion of continuous walking.
Furthermore, when focusing on "arm swing during walking," it was confirmed that participants who were subsequently diagnosed with Parkinson's disease spent less time swinging their arms naturally while walking. The research team reported that differences could be confirmed even when the walking data had been measured nearly seven years before the Parkinson's disease diagnosis.
Methods for the early diagnosis of Parkinson's disease have long been studied, and blood tests using AI tools and similar approaches are considered promising. If signs of Parkinson's disease could be identified from "arm swing during walking," this could help identify people at risk outside the consulting room and screen people for invitation to clinical trials that aim to delay the progression of Parkinson's disease at an early stage.
That said, the results of this study merely show differences between the group that was subsequently diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and the group that was not, and cannot predict whether a particular individual will develop the disease. Parkinson's disease is not the only factor that affects arm swing during walking; pain, medications being taken, and other health conditions can also affect walking.
In addition, each participant's walking data were collected during a specific period, making it impossible to determine how the participant's gait changed or when it changed. Future research is expected to clarify how gait changes over time by periodically tracking the walking patterns of the same participants.
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