Westheimer and her colleagues believe larger studies in which participants are randomized into intervention and control groups are necessary to confirm these results. They would also like to compare Dance for PD® with a general fitness intervention for Parkinson’s patients, as would Dr. Un Jung Kang, MD, Chief of Movement Disorders in the Division of Neurology at Columbia University Medical Center.
Kang commented: “Dance involves multiple facets such as physical training, emotional reward of participation, and social interactions, all of which should be beneficial in PD. Findings such as this study beg for randomized control study to demonstrate objective benefit of the intervention and to compare the effect of their unique program to other fitness programs not only in motor outcomes, but also patients’ ability to engage in the program consistently over long term and other non-motor features of PD.”
Co-authors are Olie Westheimer, MA; Cynthia McRae, PhD; Claire Henchcliffe, MD, DPhil; Arman Fesharaki, MD; Sofya Glazman, MD; Heather Ene, MD; and Ivan Bodis-Wollner, MD, DSc.
Click on the button below to access the full article, which is available free of charge from October 23rd through December 23rd, 2015.
This study adds to the body of research being done around the world to investigate the effects of dance and dance classes on people with Parkinson's, with on-going projects at Roehampton University/English National Ballet (Sara Houston and Ashley McGill), York University/Dancing With Parkinson's/Canada's National Ballet School (Joseph DeSouza), McMaster University/Hamilton City Ballet (Matthew Woolhouse), and University of Florida (Jill Sonke and Michael Okun) among others.
In an exciting related development, Sara Houston and Ashley McGill, with colleagues from English National Ballet (ENB), will hold a day-long symposium this Tuesday, October 27 to announce findings from the latest phase of their ground-breaking research, providing the first longitudinal piece of evidence on the impact of the ENB program over the past three years. Click
here for details.
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