Effects of walking speed on gait biomechanics in healthy participants: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Background Understanding the effects of gait speed on biomechanical variables is fundamental for a proper evaluation of alterations in gait, since pathological individuals tend to walk slower than healthy controls. Therefore, the aim of the study was to perform a systematic review of the effects of gait speed on spatiotemporal parameters, joint kinematics, joint kinetics, and ground reaction forces in healthy children, young adults, and older adults. Methods A systematic electronic search was performed on PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science databases to identify studies published between 1980 and 2019. A modified Quality Index was applied to assess methodological quality, and effect sizes with 95% confidence intervals were calculated as the standardized mean differences. For the meta-analyses, a fixed or random effect model and the statistical heterogeneity were calculated using the I 2 index. Results Twenty original full-length studies were included in the final analyses with a total of 587 healthy individuals evaluated, of which four studies analyzed the gait pattern of 227 children, 16 studies of 310 young adults, and three studies of 59 older adults. In general, gait speed affected the amplitude of spatiotemporal gait parameters, joint kinematics, joint kinetics, and ground reaction forces with a decrease at slow speeds and increase at fast speeds in relation to the comfortable speed. Specifically, moderate-to-large effect sizes were found for each age group and speed: children (slow, − 3.61 to 0.59; fast, − 1.05 to 2.97), young adults (slow, − 3.56 to 4.06; fast, − 4.28 to 4.38), and older adults (slow, − 1.76 to 0.52; fast, − 0.29 to 1.43). Conclusions This review identified that speed affected the gait patterns of different populations with respect to the amplitude of spatiotemporal parameters, joint kinematics, joint kinetics, and ground reaction forces. Specifically, most of the values analyzed decreased at slower speeds and increased at faster speeds. Therefore, the effects of speed on gait patterns should also be considered when comparing the gait analysis of pathological individuals with normal or control ones. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s13643-019-1063-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Effects of age and speed on the ankle–foot system’s power during walking

“…Hence, the observed age-related effect on the negative work of the foot during walking might be related to the deterioration of the heel pad property with aging, but this needs to be further investigated. There has been a raising concern about the potential confounding effect of speed on the relationship between aging and gait biomechanics 14 . However, we didn't find any difference between the gait speed of the two age groups, and therefore speed was not a confounding factor to the observed gait biomechanics, and also because we didn't find any effect of age (with the exception on the negative work of the foot as discussed previously).…”

“…Slower gait speed is usually associated with aging and, considering the effects of speed on gait biomechanics, variations in walking speed, within the subject or between subjects, can confound the association between a demographic predictor, such as age, and a gait biomechanics feature 14 – 17 . In general, maximum amplitudes of lower limb joint kinetics are directly proportional to gait speed 14 , 17 . Of note, some studies have found that young and older individuals adopt similar gait speeds, at least while walking at their self-selected pace in laboratory settings 18 , 19 .…”

Walking with head-mounted virtual and augmented reality devices: Effects on position control and gait biomechanics

“…It is therefore suggested that the design of future training protocols should consider repeating a similar experiment on specific patient groups within a clinical setting. Third, the fixed walking speed within this study was slower than the comfortable speed range of healthy young adults (1.05–1.43 m/s) [55], but it was comparable to the reported speed used in a previous gait retraining study (0.86 ± 0.17 m/s) [10]. Finally, only one VR device was tested in this experiment, and therefore future studies should consider other models that support stereoscopic displays and position guidance.…”

Association between the levels of physical activity and plantar pressure in 6-14-year-old children

“…Specifically, the aforementioned studies have shown that faster walking speed increases the level of peak and mean plantar pressures in both younger (Segal et al, 2004;Taylor, Menz & Keenan, 2004;Rosenbaum et al, 1994) and older adults (Burnfield et al, 2004) in almost all regions beneath the foot. As for younger children, a recent systematic review and meta-analysis has shown that they walk slower, compared to older ones, which lowers the cadence, step and stride length ''and decreases vertical, baking and propulsive forces'' (Fukuchi, Fukuchi & Duarte, 2019). On the other hand, younger children have smaller feet.…”