Parkinson’s Disease Treatments: Treating Symptoms Through Group Power Movements Or Passive Forced Cycling

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease that affects motor and non-motor function due to a loss of dopamine. There are exercise interventions that have been shown to improve PD symptoms, such as passive forced cycling and group fitness classes. Passive forced cycling is a useful, non-invasive treatment for PD, and has been shown to produce similar effects to common PD medications including improvement in motor function, gait, and quality of life. The Group Fitness-Only (GFO) class is based on large body movements in order to slow the progression of PD symptoms. The purpose of this study was to determine if Forced Cycling paired with a group fitness class or the group fitness class alone was better in the symptomatic treatment of PD. METHODS: A total of ten participants diagnosed with stage two or three PD were recruited through a local support group and a medical facility. Each participant was randomly assigned to either GFO or group fitness class paired with Forced Cycling (PFC) exercise groups. Regardless of the group, the participants were asked to attend four 60-minute exercise sessions per week for four weeks. Pre and post data were collected using the MiniBESTest and PROMIS-29 survey. RESULTS: The GFO group improved their Timed Up and Go test (Pretest: 6.51±0.80, Posttest: 5.87±1.03, p = 0.041). The time taken to perform the TUG also improved more for the GFO group when compared to the PFC group’s posttest data (Pretest: 5.87±1.03, Posttest: 8.59±1.74, p = 0.032). Dynamic gait sub-score improved posttest in the PFC group compared to the GFO group (Pretest: 7.8±0.8, Posttest: 9.0±0.0, p = 0.033). Other variables showed improvement but were not statistically significant. CONCLUSION: This pilot study suggests that strength-based group fitness classes are a part of an effective intervention for managing PD symptoms and could be a possible supplemental treatment option for these individuals. In this study, forced cycling showed improvements in managing symptoms of PD, however, only one variable was statistically significant. Future studies with longer interventions and larger sample sizes may yield more significant improvements than this study.