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BMC Geriatrics

Virtual reality training linked to balance changes in older adults

An eight-week randomized trial in 40 adults aged 65 or older found balance and mobility changes compared with unsupervised home exercise.

Paper by Chien-Jung Huang, Hung-Chou Chen, Lyubov Oknina, Shih-Wei Huang, Li-Fong Lin · Taipei Medical University

Our read

Interventions
Studied:
Randomized trial in 40 community-dwelling older adults, 8 weeks (Registered NCT05779189)
What changed:
Balance improved with virtual reality training compared with unsupervised exercise
The catch:
Unequal supervision and unknown control-group exercise exposure prevent isolating the effect of virtual reality
In the record:
The 8th paper on virtual reality balance training with results in people; 11 on record in all.

Editor of record: Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News

Paper
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Forty community-dwelling adults aged 65 or older, mostly women, took part in an exploratory randomized trial. Twenty completed 16 supervised, 30-minute sessions of game-based virtual reality balance training over eight weeks. Twenty received exercise videos, health education and weekly telephone reminders, without supervised exercise or adherence tracking.

Changes in several balance measures differed between groups, including some measured while participants also performed attention tasks. Average time on a test of standing up, walking and sitting fell from 8.8 to 6.5 seconds with training, versus 9.1 to 8.2 seconds in controls. Single-leg standing performance also changed differently between groups. Concern about falling increased in both groups, with a greater increase in the training group; the authors urged caution in interpreting this result. All participants completed both assessments. No adverse events, injuries or training-related discomfort were reported.

Why it matters

Falls threaten older adults’ independence. The findings support the feasibility of supervised, technology-assisted balance training in community settings.

Caveats

Participants and assessors knew group assignments, only the virtual reality group received supervised exercise, and the analysis did not adjust for testing many outcomes. All four men were in the training group; the trial excluded people with cognitive impairment, major neurological disorders or severe osteoporosis, limiting applicability to those groups.

From the paper

Participants

A total of 40 participants were enrolled: 20 in the experimental group (4 men, 16 women) and 20 in the control group (all women).

Methods, Participants

Result

Significant effects were identified for overall sway with eyes open (OA(S)_EO; estimate = 0.22, 95% CI 0.02 to 0.42, p = 0.028), anterior–posterior sway with eyes open (AP(S)_EO; estimate = 0.19, 95% CI 0.02 to 0.37, p = 0.032) …

Results, Balance function under single-task condition

Harms

No adverse events, injuries, or intervention-related discomfort were reported.

Results, Participants

Limitation

First, the sample size was relatively small, which limits statistical power and generalizability.

Study limitations

Quoted word for word from the full text on PubMed Central.

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