![Sample our Health and Social Care journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5938/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Health-Social-Care.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
The purpose of the study was to investigate whether older people with diabetes exhibit different temporal characteristics related to postural control during gait initiation (GI) from age-matched healthy individuals. Eighteen participants were recruited and divided into two groups: nine people with diabetes and nine age/gender-matched people without diabetes. Participants performed the task of GI along 10m walkway on Tek-Scan® with bare feet. The temporal events of foot position were identified from ground reaction forces during five GI trials. For the absolute temporal events, our results show the anticipatory postural adjustment (APA) in the diabetic group was significantly longer than the nondiabetic group during GI. Despite having a longer APA for participants with diabetes, the relative temporal events of the diabetic group were not significantly different from the nondiabetic group during GI, which suggests that the feedforward control of GI remains unaffected after diabetes.