Virtual reality visual feedback cues can help people with multiple sclerosis (MS) to walk more quickly and lengthen their stride, Israeli researchers report.

Gait problems occur in roughly 85 percent of MS patients, Drs. Yoram Baram and Ariel Miller of Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa explain in the medical journal Neurology.

A virtual reality system that incorporates the user’s movements into a visual display that provides feedback has been shown to improve gait in patients with Parkinson’s. The researchers tested a more advanced version of the device with 16 MS patients.

The team found that patients whose walking speed was below the average for the group had a 13.5 percent improvement while using the device; those whose speed was already above average weren’t helped much, seeing an improvement of just 1.5 percent.

Patients then took a ten-minute break, and were tested without using the virtual reality system. The below-average patients showed a 24.5 percent residual improvement in speed, while those with above-average speed showed a 9.1 percent improvement.

Tests of the device in healthy people did not show any improvement, and in fact it reduced speed and stride length.

“This makes the results for the patients even more noteworthy, since improved apparatus and prolonged training are expected to reduce the burdening effect, hence, further improve performance,” the researchers write.

The findings support the use of virtual reality-based approaches to rehabilitation in patients with MS, as well as other types of neurological disorders, they conclude.

SOURCE: Neurology, January 24, 2006.