State Innovation Promotion of the Free State of Saxony

Fall prophylaxis in senior citizens: Influencing factors of sensory perception, their mechanisms of action, and measures of therapeutic exercise for degenerative diseases in senior citizens in the German Free State of Saxony (SiA)

The Free State of Saxony has one of the largest percentages of senior citizens in all of Germany. With increasing age, motor skills decrease and numerous degenerative changes occur with regard to proprioceptive and somatosensory capabilities. Furthermore, in the course of demographic change in the Free State of Saxony, the number of age-related degenerative diseases (i.e. diabetes) is continually rising. The main symptoms of such diseases also include degeneration of proprioceptive and somatosensory capabilities.
These changes lead, among other things, to a loss of sensitivity in plantar receptors, which may represent a deciding risk factor for the prevalence of falls with increasing age. The State Innovation Promotion sponsored by the European Social Fund (ESF) and the Free State of Saxony (October 2016 through September 2019) aims to quantify the reduction of plantar sensitivity due to age and age-related degenerative diseases as a possible cause of increasing frequency of falls in the elderly. Taking the demographic change in the Free State of Saxony into consideration, the collected data will be used to develop measures of sensorimotor therapy to help prevent falls.

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