The IDEA-FAST consortium published a paper in the IEEE Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation, a top-tier journal with an impact factor of 5.2 and ranked in the top 10% of the Scimago Journal Ranking. In their paper titled “Evaluation of walking activity and gait to identify physical and mental fatigue in neurodegenerative and immune disorders: preliminary insights from the IDEA-FAST feasibility study,” a team of researchers, including LASIGE’s integrated member Tiago Guerreiro and PhD student Diogo Branco, explored the relationships between gait characteristics derived from an inertial measurement unit (IMU) and patient-reported fatigue in the IDEA-FAST feasibility study. Participants with neurodegenerative and immune-mediated inflammatory disorders wore a lower-back IMU continuously for up to 10 days at home. Concurrently, participants completed PROs (physical fatigue and mental fatigue) up to four times a day. Against expectations, the outcomes indicate that there is a weak relationship between typical gait measures and abnormal fatigue. However, factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic may have impacted gait behaviours. Therefore, further investigations with a larger cohort are required to fully understand the relationship between gait and abnormal fatigue.

The paper is available here.