Ongoing
High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) appears to be a superior training strategy over traditional moderate continuous aerobic exercise (CAE) in terms of physical, mental and neurotrophic effects, with significantly less overall training time and workload. Although promising, this training strategy has not yet been sufficiently studied in people with parkinson’s disease. .

People with parkinson’s disease (PD) experience motor problems and non-motor problems impeding their daily functioning. Current pharmacological treatments are not adequately addressing these problems, and alternative rehabilitation treatments are needed.

Intensive physical training is promising for promoting neuroplasticity in PD. High-intensity exercise can improve walking, balance, and cognition.

However, the optimal type of physical training achieving these effects is unknown.

The objectives of this study are two-fold:

  1. compare the effects of 4 weeks of High-Intensity Interval training (HIIT) with 4 weeks of Continuous aerobic exercise training (CAE) on motor and non-motor aspects;
  2. investigate the association between blood biomarkers for neuroplasticity and motor and non-motor performance for both exercise strategies.

Due to heterogeneity in the population of people with PD, a "single subject, alternating treatment design (ABACA) with repeated measurements" is used. Here, a participant is given different interventions (B=HIIT/C=CAE) interspersed with baseline periods (A) and (bi)weekly repeated measurements are taken over time. Four subjects perform HIIT or CAE 3x / week for 4 weeks separated by baseline periods of 8 weeks.

Outcome parameters include motor and non-motor symptoms, Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor and Neurofilament blood biomarkers, and measures for walking and balance, as well as cognition, mood and biorhythm.

Individual recovery patterns will be analyzed with visual inspection of between and within phase changes. Regression analysis will be done to analyze differences in study phase. We hypothesize that HIIT will be superior in inducing motor and non- motor improvements and neuroplasticity related disease modifying effects.

Researchers involved

  • E. Goudzwaard;
  • Y. Zekhnini;
  • Y. Mahieu;
  • Dr. M. Rietberg;
  • Dr. T. Vanbellingen.