The interaction of gait characteristics and concerns about falling in community-dwelling older adults
Sabine Britting, Sebastian Krumpoch, Ulrich Lindemann, Anja Müller, Nicolas Rohleder, Toby Jack Ellmers, Alex Burkard, Ellen Freiberger, Robert Kob · 2025
Read The interaction of gait characteristics and concerns about falling in community-dwelling older adults by Sabine Britting, Sebastian Krumpoch, Ulrich Lindemann, Anja Müller, Nicolas Rohleder, Toby Jack Ellmers, Alex Burkard, Ellen Freiberger, Robert Kob (2025) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-12706059.txt.
Description
Sabine Britting and co-authors connect how older people walk with how much they fear falling in this 2025 study. Fear of falling is common in later life and predicts real falls. A cautious, shuffling gait goes with the fear, but which parts of gait matter most was unsettled.
The team merged two studies of community-dwelling adults over sixty-five, 261 people averaging eighty years old. An instrumented walkway measured their walking at normal and top speed, and a standard scale scored their concern. Higher concern went with weaker performance on nearly every measure. Normal speed alone explained a quarter of the differences in concern; adding top speed and stride pattern raised that to nearly a third. Four questions about balance in motion could screen for the cautious gait. The authors say walking speed is a quick window into this fear.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Sabine Britting, Sebastian Krumpoch, Ulrich Lindemann, Anja Müller, Nicolas Rohleder, Toby Jack Ellmers, Alex Burkard, Ellen Freiberger, Robert Kob |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2025 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 27 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |