MoStrAct

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Quantitative assessment of human MOvement, muscle STRength and muscle ACTivation in patients with Neurological Disorders (Motor Neuron Disease, Parkinson's disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Ataxia, Hereditary Spastic Paraparesis and Adults with Cerebral Palsy).

• IRAS ID

  252503

• Contact name

  Ellen Buckley

• Contact email

  ellen.buckley1@nhs.net

• Sponsor organisation

  Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

• Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier

  STH20327, STH number

• Duration of Study in the UK

  2 years, 8 months, 31 days

• Research summary

  Diseases of the brain and nervous system often affect how people move and walk and vary greatly in symptoms and severity, both between patients and in the same patient over time. These diseases include Parkinson’s’ Disease (PD), Multiple Sclerosis (MS), Stroke, Ataxia (unsteadiness) and Motor Neurone Disease (MND) Changes in gait and movement mirror the worsening of the disease. Monitoring the movements and gait over time will help to understand how the disease progresses.

  Currently we rely on the observations of a doctor, nurse or therapist to identify changes in muscle strength and walking. The results could vary with different examiners. To monitor patients more accurately during treatment and clinical trials, we need tests that can detect changes in movement, strength and walking pattern more accurately.
  
  We aim to measure the way people move more accurately using the following techniques:

  •Wearable sensors (to monitor activity in people’s everyday life)
  •Wearable pressure insoles (that fit inside a patient’s shoes and can measure forces exerted on to the ground during movement)
  •Muscle strength (for example, using a chair in clinic that measures the force exerted with simple movements, called the ‘strength dynamometry’ test)
  •Muscle contractionsurface electrodes are placed on the skin that painlessly measure muscle contraction during certain movements, called ‘surface electromyography’
  •Gait analysis in which stride length and other aspects of walking are measured using electronic recording.
  •For some studies, these measurements will be compared with results of scans of the muscle and bones to understand how movement relates to anatomy in more detail

  The plan is to apply these techniques to patients with a variety of neurological diseases, for example, Motor Neuron Disease, Parkinson’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Stroke, Ataxia, Hereditary spastic paraparesis and Cerebral palsy. The goal is to determine whether these more accurate measures of movement can help diagnose diseases earlier and measure change over time, which could be useful for clinical trials of new treatments in the future.

• REC name

  Yorkshire & The Humber - Sheffield Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  19/YH/0221

• Date of REC Opinion

  15 Oct 2019

• REC opinion

  Further Information Favourable Opinion