Effect of Gender and Walking Speed on Gait Variability in Healthy Young Subjects

Repetition in walking may vary from trial to trial: gait parameters are not constant but they rather fluctuate in the course of time and change from one stride to the next, even if environmental and external conditions are fixed. The aim of this study was to specify the effect of gait speed and gender on the variability of gait. The variability of spatialtemporal parameters was characterized by a coefficient of variance (CV), the percentage ratio of standard deviation and mean; on the other hand, the variability of angular parameters was characterized by a mean coefficient of variance (MeanCV), which is the average coefficient variance over all integer percents of normalized gait cycles. The spatial positions of the anatomical points for calculating gait parameters were determined in 33 young healthy controls. Walking speed influences the variability of gait: gait analysis must be peformed at each self-selected walking speed of the group investigated. Gender influences significantly the variability gait. This means that the values of gait variability should be compared by taking gender into account.