@article{Christian Laßmann20221,
author = "Christian La{\ss}mann and Winfried Ilg and Tim W. Rattay and Ludger Sch{\"o}ls and Martin A. Giese and Daniel Haeufle",
abstract = "In Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP) type 4 (SPG4) a length-dependent axonal degeneration in the cortico-spinal tract leads to progressing symptoms of hyperreflexia, muscle weakness, and spasticity of lower extremities. Even before the manifestation of spastic gait, in the prodromal phase, axonal degeneration leads to subtle gait changes. These gait changes – depicted by digital gait recording – are related to disease severity in prodromal and early-to-moderate manifest SPG4 subjects. We hypothesize that dysfunctional neuro-muscular mechanisms such as hyperreflexia and muscle weakness explain these disease severity-related gait changes of prodromal and early-to-moderate manifest SPG4 subjects. We test our hypothesis in computer simulation with a neuro-muscular model of human walking. We introduce neuro-muscular dysfunction by gradually increasing sensory-motor reflex sensitivity based on increased velocity feedback and gradually increasing muscle weakness by reducing maximum isometric force. By increasing hyperreflexia of plantarflexor and dorsiflexor muscles, we found gradual muscular and kinematic changes in neuro-musculoskeletal simulations that are comparable to subtle gait changes found in prodromal SPG4 subjects. Predicting kinematic changes of prodromal and early-to-moderate manifest SPG4 subjects by gradual alterations of sensory-motor reflex sensitivity allows us to link gait as a directly accessible performance marker to emerging neuro-muscular changes for early therapeutic interventions.",
doi = "https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.10.14.22281080",
journal = "medRxiv 2022",
title = "{D}ysfunctional neuro-muscular1 mechanisms explain gradual gait2 changes in prodromal spastic3 paraplegia",
url = "https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.14.22281080v2#:~:text=In%20Hereditary%20Spastic%20Paraplegia%20%28HSP%29%20type%204%20%28SPG4%29,phase%2C%20axonal%20degeneration%20leads%20to%20subtle%20gait%20changes.",
year = "2022",
files = "2022.10.14.22281080v2.full.pdf",
}