Abstract
Progression of age can influence gait characteristics. Previous research has investigated lower extremity joint mechanics between young and elderly people in locomotion, however little is known about whether differences exist between young and middle age people. Ten young healthy subjects (22.8 ± 5.3 years) and ten middle age healthy subjects (50.7 ± 6.0 years) engaged in treadmill walking (from 0.8 to 2.0 m/s) and running (from 1.8 to 3.8 m/s). The middle age group had higher ankle plantar flexor moment angular impulse (p = 0.002), total support moment impulse (p = 0.016), and hip stance positive work (p = 0.029) across walking speeds. Additionally, the middle age group had higher knee flexion angle at ground contact in walking (p = 0.005) and running (p = 0.037). These findings indicate that moderate age affects changes in ankle and hip kinetic characteristics in walking, and knee kinematic patterns in both walking and running.
Highlights
Human locomotion results from an integration of physiological and biomechanical factors[1]
Older adults tended to transfer the mechanical demands from distal to proximal in the lower extremity, by increasing net positive work at the hip to compensate for decreased work generated at the ankle[2,6,9]
This increase would be associated with relevant joint level kinetic changes, such as joint flexor/extensor moment and relevant stance phase extensor moment angular impulse, joint mechanical work, power absorption and generation[2]
Summary
Human locomotion results from an integration of physiological and biomechanical factors[1]. A decrease in preferred locomotion speed and step length have been reported as typical gait pattern changes associated with increased age[2,3,4,5] This suggests that to achieve the same locomotion speed compared with young age people, there may be some compensatory mechanisms within the lower extremity system in middle-age and elderly individuals. These observations indicate that the knee joint may become a “stiffer” system as age increases While most of these studies focused on comparisons between young and older adults, little is known about whether there are differences in gait patterns and lower extremity joint mechanics across a smaller age range: between young and middle-age people in walking and running conditions. We hypothesized that the middle age group would have: (1) higher joint stiffness; (2) higher stance phase hip joint extensor moment angular impulse and positive work, lower ankle joint plantar flexor moment angular impulse and positive work; and (3) smaller joint angle range of motion compared with the young age group
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