Wayne State University researchers are looking for ways to help people with multiple sclerosis move better.

MS is a degenerative neurological disease that makes it hard for some patients to walk and keep their balance. 

Scientists wanted to know whether a physical therapy regimen that includes walking backward could improve mobility and balance. Their new study suggests it can.

They started small

Dr. Nora Fritz led the research team. She’s the director of research for WSU’s Department of Health Sciences. She’s also a physical therapy professor.

She says they’ve been looking at this in the lab for some time.

“We noticed that some individuals tend to fall backward more frequently than forward,” Fritz says. “We also noticed that individuals tend to have more trouble walking backward than they do walking forward.”

Researchers asked eight MS patients to take part in an eight-week case study. They came to the lab once a week to do backward walking training with a neurologic physical therapist. Subjects walked on a treadmill and on the ground. They also did back-stepping exercises in the lab and at home.

Fritz says the results were encouraging.

“It seems that everyone who’s participating is experiencing some level of improvement,” she says. “They really like it and they’re finding it useful.”

The team also conducted MRI screenings before and after the eight-week program.

“We looked at how the brain changed during this period,” Fritz says. “We saw evidence that there was actually some changes in structures of the brain related to balance in just a short time.”

Results could lead to new treatment

Fritz says it’s too early to reach any conclusions from the study, but the results were good enough to begin a larger, randomized control study with 90 MS patients. That lasted six months.

“Everyone has completed the training, and we’re just in the monitoring period now,” Fritz says. “We anticipate the first papers from that study to come out within the next several months.”

The findings of the eight-week trial appear in the Journal of Neurologic Physical Therapy.