Investigation of the utility of smartphone-based gait analyses in discrimination between patients with Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease

Abstract

Objective To reveal the discriminative value of gait parameters between Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD) subjects. Methods We included all consecutive patients with newly diagnosed AD and those with a diagnosis of PD who applied to our polyclinic between March 2022 and June 2022. The demographic and clinical features were evaluated during interviews. The gait analyses were performed using a quantitative, smartphone-based gait analyses program. Using this program, the step time (ST), step length (SL), step number (SN), gait velocity (GV), and cadence were measured in all individuals. Results Overall, 31 patients with AD and 45 with PD were enrolled in the analyses. The mean age of the AD group was higher according to those with PD. As expected, the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) values were lower in the AD group. The comparative analyses of the gait parameters between groups did not reveal differences in any of the measures. The correlation analyses to investigate the possible association between the disease severity and gait parameters revealed that the MDS-UPDRS showed low negative correlations with SL and GV. Conclusion Our findings suggest that the evaluation of gait using the gait analyses program does not contribute to the discrimination between AD and PD in clinical practice.