Clinical Study The Parkinsonian Gait Spatiotemporal Parameters Quantified by a Single Inertial Sensor before and after Automated Mechanical Peripheral Stimulation Treatment Ana Kleiner, 1,2 Manuela Galli, 1,3 Maria Gaglione, 4 Daniela Hildebrand, 5 Patrizio Sale, 3 Giorgio Albertini, 3 Fabrizio Stocchi, 3 and Maria Francesca De Pandis 4 1 Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, 20133 Milano, Lombardia, Italy 2 Movement Analysis and Neuroscience-Neurological Rehabilitation Laboratories, University of Health Sciences of Porto Alegre, 90050-170 Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil 3 IRCCS San Rafaele Pisana Tosinvest Sanit´ a, 00163 Roma, Lazio, Italy 4 San Rafaele Cassino Hospital Tosinvest Sanit´ a, 03043 Roma, Lazio, Italy 5 UNIMED Hospital, 13500-391 Rio Claro, SP, Brazil Correspondence should be addressed to Ana Kleiner; anafrkleiner@gmail.com Received 29 May 2015; Revised 5 August 2015; Accepted 2 September 2015 Academic Editor: Talia Herman Copyright © 2015 Ana Kleiner et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Tis study aims to evaluate the change in gait spatiotemporal parameters in subjects with Parkinson’s disease (PD) before and afer Automated Mechanical Peripheral Stimulation (AMPS) treatment. Tirty-fve subjects with PD and 35 healthy age-matched subjects took part in this study. A dedicated medical device (Gondola) was used to administer the AMPS. All patients with PD were treated in of levodopa phase and their gait performances were evaluated by an inertial measurement system before and afer the intervention. Te one-way ANOVA for repeated measures was performed to assess the diferences between pre- and post-AMPS and the one-way ANOVA to assess the diferences between PD patients and the control group. Spearman’s correlations assessed the associations between patients with PD clinical status (H&Y) and the percentage of improvement of the gait variables afer AMPS ( < 0.05 for all tests). Te PD group had an improvement of 14.85% in the stride length; 14.77% in the gait velocity; and 29.91% in the gait propulsion. Te correlation results showed that the higher the H&Y classifcation, the higher the stride length percentage of improvement. Te treatment based on AMPS intervention seems to induce a better performance in the gait pattern of PD patients, mainly in intermediate and advanced stages of the condition. 1. Introduction Te most typical gait pattern of Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a short-stepped shufing gait. It is characterized by reduced stride length and walking speed [1, 2]. Tese gait disorders worsen progressively, as the disease advances, and are related to the risk of falling among the Parkinsonians [3]. Terefore, it is not surprising that gait impairment in PD is the major contributor to decreased patients’ quality of life [4]. Te management of PD was traditionally centered on drug therapy, with levodopa being its “gold standard” treat- ment [5]. Several studies have demonstrated the ability of levodopa to decrease stride length and improve walk speed [6]. However, as the disease progresses, chronic levodopa treatment can be associated with response decrease and with development of motor complications, including wearing-of episodes and dyskinesia [5]. To reduce these motor fuctuations, new treatments based on peripheral stimulation of the sensory-motor system, called bottom-up stimulation, have been inspiring new rehabili- tation approaches in PD [7, 8]. Recently, new approaches have been developed to recover the gait impairment such as the Automated Mechanical Peripheral Stimulation (AMPS) treatment [9, 10]. Te AMPS is delivered by a dedicated device, known as Gondola (Gondola Medical Technologies SA, Switzerland), and consists in the application of a pressure Hindawi Publishing Corporation Parkinson’s Disease Volume 2015, Article ID 390512, 6 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/390512