Alprazolam Reduces Freezing of Gait (FOG) and Improves FOG-Related Gait Deficiencies
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background. Freezing of gait (FOG) is an intractable motor symptom in Parkinson’s disease (PD) that increases fall risk and impairs the quality of life. FOG has been associated with anxiety, with experimental support for the notion that anxiety itself provokes FOG. We investigated the effect of acute anxiety reduction via alprazolam on FOG in PD. Methods. In ten patients with PD, FOG, and normal cognition, we administered 0.25 mg alprazolam in one session and placebo in another, in counterbalanced order. At each session, on separate days, patients walked on a pressure-sensitive walkway. Using Oculus Rift virtual-reality goggles, patients walked along a plank that appeared to be (a) level with the floor, in the low-anxiety condition or (b) raised high above the ground, in the high-anxiety conditions. In this way, we assessed the impacts of anxiety and alprazolam (i.e., anxiety reduction) on FOG frequency and other gait parameters. Results. FOG events appeared only in the high-anxiety conditions. Alprazolam significantly reduced subjective and objective measures of anxiety, as well as the prevalence of FOG ( <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M1"><mi>p</mi><mo>=</mo><mn>0.05</mn></math> ). Furthermore, alprazolam improved swing time ( <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M2"><mi>p</mi><mo><</mo><mn>0.05</mn></math> ) and gait variability in all conditions, particularly during the elevated plank trials. Interpretation. Our results suggest that (1) anxiety induces FOG, and (2) alprazolam concomitantly reduces anxiety and FOG. Alprazolam further improved gait stability (i.e., swing time and gait variability). These findings reveal that anxiety triggers FOG in PD. Treating anxiety can reduce FOG and improve gait stability, potentially offering new therapeutic avenues for this intractable and disabling symptom in PD.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".