Treadmill training facilitates the onset of walking in infants with Down syndrome. Pediatric physical therapists are being challenged to document the functional outcomes of their therapeutic practices. Although there is great variability in the age of onset of most motor milestones in all children, a review of multiple studies involving infants with DS would suggest that 24 months of age is a very common age for walking to occur.
Many factors interact to influence the onset of walking.
Infants with DS performed similar to infants without DS but at a later age. Learning that infants with DS possess a hidden ability for alternating stepping long before they walk offers an early window of opportunity to implement an intensive early intervention program designed to facilitate earlier onset of walking and improved walking gait. We propose that treadmill stepping practice strengthens and stabilizes the neural network involved in producing this pattern, increases the leg strength needed to pull to a stand and walk, and improves the specific postural control mechanisms needed to maintain upright balance when transferring weight from one leg to the other. We hypothesized that the treadmill training will have a positive impact on multiple subsystems which, in cooperation, should facilitate the onset of walking. In this study we randomly assigned 30 infants with Trisomy 21 to the experimental treadmill or control groups.