Comparison of the reaction Forces during walking in the elderly with the history of Covied-19 and healthy people

Abstract

The aim of the present study is to compare the ground reaction forces during walking in the elderly with a history of covid-19 and healthy people. The statistical sample of the current research was 30 men, who were purposefully divided into 15 people with a history of coronavirus infection and 15 healthy people. The Bertec force plate made in the United States was used in the middle part of a 15-meter track to record the ground reaction forces. It was used to record ground reaction force data during execution with a sampling rate of 1000 Hz. In order to adjust the placement of the subjects' feet on the force plate, 5 times of walking and running were performed experimentally by each subject. After that, 5 acceptable attempts were made at a certain speed and the heel-to-toe running pattern (kinetic) of each subject was recorded. Ground reaction force data was obtained using the fourth-order Butterworth filter with a frequency cutoff of 50 Hz. In order to describe and explain the data, descriptive statistics were used, and Shapiro-Wilk test was used to normalize the data, and independent T-test was used to compare the averages of both groups. The results showed that at the time of reaching the peak of the vertical ground reaction force when the heel hits the ground (P=0.030), the peak force of the anterior-posterior component when the heel is separated (P=0.031); and A significant difference was observed in the displacement of the center of pressure in the anterior-posterior direction (P=0.002) in the two groups, and there was no significant difference in other variables (P<0.05). The obtained results indicate that compared to healthy people with a history of COVID-19, especially in the anterior-posterior direction, elderly people with a history of COVID-19 experience less power in the forward step and a decrease in speed, so in the rehabilitation of affected people, more attention should be paid to This issue is essential.