Griffith, Garett J; Department of Physical Therapy and Human Movement Sciences, Chicago, IL. USA
Thomsen, Brandi;Xie, Zepei;Zhang, Aileen; et al

Medicine and science in sports and exercise,2025 Oct 22

• Background: Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative nervous system condition causing motor and non-motor symptoms. Endurance training is commonly prescribed in people with PD for possible slowing of disease progression. Since people with PD exhibit lower cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF), it is important to understand peak aerobic capacity (VO2peak) in people with PD. VO2peak prediction equations may be used when cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET) is unavailable; however, exercise-based PD-specific prediction equations are lacking. The purpose of the study was to develop a PD-specific VO2peak prediction equation, and to compare this equation to published VO2peak prediction equations.
• Methods: N=127 never medicated individuals with PD, aged 40-80yrs, Hoehn & Yahr stages 1-2, within 5yrs of diagnosis, exercising ≤3days/week, completed a treadmill CPET. Linear regression analyses were performed to generate the VO2peak equation from a validation sub-sample, which was applied to a cross-validation sub-sample. The equation was compared to two published equations for healthy adults.
• Results: The PD-specific VO2peak equation was: VO2peak (mL/kg/min) = 12.466 + 0.149*(TM speed [m/min]) + 85.7*(TM grade [%, as a decimal]) – 2.383*(sex [0=male, 1=female]) – 0.135*(age [years]). There was no difference between estimated and measured VO2peak in the cross-validation sub-sample. Our equation successfully predicted VO2peak in early PD, whereas VO2peak was over- and underestimated in people with PD by the ACSM and Foster equations, respectively.
• Conclusions: Clinicians can estimate VO2peak in individuals with PD to identify those for whom endurance exercise training should be a major health priority, develop an exercise prescription, and assess changes in VO2peak over time.