Intra-limb coordination in gait pattern in healthy people and multiple sclerosis patients

The aim of this study was to compare the intra-limb coordination during treadmill walking performed by persons with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and healthy adults. Twelve healthy adults (male = 5, female = 7) and twelve age and gender matched MS patients (male = 5, female = 7) were selected non-randomly. All participants walked on a treadmill for 20 strides on two occasions. The mean absolute relative phase was used to compare 4 stages of the gait cycle (heel contact, mid stance, toe off, and mid swing) between the two groups. Dependent variables were relative phase and angular position in the knee and ankle joints. Hotelling’s T2 test and Cross-correlation coefficient were used to analysis the multiple sets of data. The shape of angle-angle plot showed significant between-group differences in the patterns of gait (T2 = 35.02, F = 35.02, p < 0.05, η2 = 0.97). Analysis of variance results showed that there were significant differences between the relative phase of the two groups on heel contact (F = 13.09, p < 0.05, η2 = 0.65) and mid stance (F = 15.12, p < 0.05, η2 = 0.68) stages. Cross-correlation function results showed that in the healthy group, there were no significant relationships between the angular positions of two joints in the different stages, whereas in the MS group there was a significant inverse relationship (CCF = -0.45, p < 0.05) between the angular positions of two joints. In conclusion, the results of this study showed that in people with MS, intra-limb coordination patterns during walking are different from healthy people in terms of spatiotemporal features because of structural and functional changes due to the disease.