Neuropathic gait shows only trends towards increased variability of sagittal plane kinematics during treadmill locomotion

Patients with diabetes mellitus (DM) and peripheral neuropathy (PN) are at greater risk of falling and of suffering injuries during falls. It has been hypothesized that PN leads to changes in gait variability that may account for this increased risk. The purpose of this investigation was to analyze the variability of the sagittal plane kinematics of diabetic neuropathic (NP), diabetic non-neuropathic (NNP) and age- and weight-matched control subjects (control) during motorized treadmill walking at constant speed. While there were distinct trends towards increased variability within the three diagnostic groups (NP>NNP>control) for several measures of gait variability, most of these trends were not statistically significant. We hypothesize that motorized treadmill walking may be inherently less variable than overground walking and that statistical measures of variability may not be sufficient to fully characterize stride-to-stride variability in human locomotion.