The Relationship of Grip Strength to Gait Patterns of Older People

Abstract

The gait pattern of older people can be characterized as decreases in walking velocity, stride length, and increase in double support time. The changes of gait pattern in older people who fall is even more obvious than the relatively healthy elderly. Weakness of lower extremity muscles seems to be an important factor in these changes. The authors intended to find a simple and easy measurement to detect the early sign of gait pattern changes, and thus risk for falls in older people. Grip strength measure was reported to be a relative measure of general body muscle strength. Relationships between grip strength and walking velocity, stride length, and stride width were examined in the present study. The gait and grip strength of eleven male subjects aged from 64 to 96 years (mean=78, SD=8) from the population seen in the ”Geriatric Evaluation and Management (GEM) project” at the Veterans Administration Medical Center, Pittsburgh were measured by footprint method and hand dynamometer. The Pearson's product moment correlation was applied for the data analyses. Both adjusted (grip strength measures adjusted to weight, gait parameters to height) and unadjusted data were analyzed. The results showed high correlation between grip strength and walking velocity (r=0.738, p=0.007), grip strength and stride length (r=0.758, p=0.005), and walking velocity and stride length (r=0.908, p＜0.001) of the adjusted data. Therefore, measures of grip strength were associated with changes in the gait pattern of older people was concluded. In addition, discussions about the demographic data and measurement results of the subjects were provided. Further study with an increase in the sample size in order to enable the conduction of quantitative analyses and establishment of predictive equations was suggested.