Can Your Walk Indicate Early Signs Of Dementia? | Subject Matter Expert Dr. Jenna Yentes

Members of the media are encouraged to use these expert videos in their coverage, in their entirety or edited as needed. To request an interview with the researcher or obtain a copy of a video, email tamunews@tamu.edu. Research shows that the brain begins changing decades before dementia becomes noticeable via memory lapses or mild combativeness. Now scientists at Texas A&M University are working to determine if the way a person walks can be an early indicator of dementia. “The brain is responsible for all kinds of things, including how all the systems work together,” said Texas A&M kinesiology professor Dr. Jenna Yentes. “And walking is a presentation or manifestation of all of those systems being able to work together. So if the walking is changing, that means that the connections between the systems may not be working or firing on all cylinders. And then you start to dig a little deeper to figure out what's going on.” Yentes says that those afflicted with Parkinson’s disease usually have a similar shuffling gait. Now she is looking to determine if dementia sufferers may also have a walking style that can indicate issues early. “We are looking for those same subtle changes to see how early those appear. So it might be in how long are your steps or how wide are your steps or how many steps are you taking per minute? There are things that you may not be noticing, but to those of us that study gait, they become very important and interesting to us.” Walking speed, Yentes says, is one of the traits that her team is studying. “There's been plenty of studies that have shown that decreased walking speed is associated with numerous pathologies, everything from pulmonary disease to peripheral artery disease to, it keeps going and going. And so, it being an indicator of Alzheimer's and dementia, the speed in and of itself isn't indicative of that. We are looking to see if there's a signature in that gait to differentiate it from some of these other pathologies. Is there something specific that changes associated with that pathology, Alzheimer's and the related dementias, or is it more general?” When enough data is gathered, Yentes says, the findings can be shared with healthcare providers so they can begin checking a patient’s gait regularly, just as they would do with vital signs. “Now we can look at what are the interventions that we can do. You may not be able to stop the disease. I'm not saying that I'm going to make Alzheimer's or anybody's going to make Alzheimer’s and related dementias go away. I don't see that happening. However, can we do certain cognitive or physical interventions much earlier to maybe delay the onset of the disease? Or if we can't delay the onset, can we slow the progression?”