Thread by @RionaMcArdle

As its the first day of #WorldAlzMonth, I thought I'd give a brief overview of work I've done in collaboration with @BAM_Research.

My research focuses on improving how we diagnose and care for people with #dementia.

I use #gait analysis and #wearables to meet these aims (1/n).

My first step was to find out if people with #dementia have unique signatures of #gait impairment (i.e. Unique walking patterns).

My review revealed that gait may be useful to identify dementia but we didn't know enough about gait in dementia subtypes.

content.iospress.com/articles/journ…

With @BAM_Research, I set up the GaitDem study, which examined if #gait would be a useful marker for differential diagnosis of #Alzheimers disease and #Lewy body #dementia.

Using gold standard techniques, we found early evidence that gait may be useful.

sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

But these gold standard methods of #gait analysis are expensive & may not be clinically feasible.

In collab w/ the DFP project, we showed that it is feasible to use #WearableTech to assess gait in people with #dementia, both in clinic & the real world.

content.iospress.com/articles/journ…

As #WearableTech is becoming more popular and less expensive, these findings gave us confidence to pursue this avenue of research.

We found that #Lewy body dementias have unique signatures of #gait impairment when assessed using wearables in clinic.

sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

We were also interested in understanding how people with #dementia walk in the real world, using #wearables.

We found that people with #Lewy body dementia have different habitual #PhysicalActivity volumes and patterns than people with #Alzheimers.

karger.com/Article/Abstra…

There is still a lot of work to do to truly understand the best ways we can use #gait analysis and #wearables to improve differential diagnosis of #dementia.

I have pending work looking at patterns of #gait impairment in the real world - useful for differential diagnosis?

As we continue this work, we hope to find out how #gait can fit into the clinician's diagnostic toolkit.

How does it compare to other biomarkers? What's the best test battery?

How early can it identify specific types of #dementia?

What's the environment to assess gait?

If you're interested in this work & questions, keep an eye on @BAM_Research's work.

The huge amount of work in #Parkinsons and other age-related disorders have provided an excellent framework to follow. Consortiums like @Mobilise_D may provide us with more answers before long.

Finally, it's been a privilege to work in #dementia research, & I hope that this work might help someone someday. Big thanks to @alzheimerssoc @NIHRNewcBRC for funding, to the many researchers who supported it, & to the wonderful participants who made it happen.

#WorldAlzMonth

Update on this thread today.

Gait patterns in #dementia disease subtypes are dependent on the environment they occur within, leaving questions for future research. How can we best measure real world gait, and how can it help us support clinical practice?

mdpi.com/1424-8220/21/3…