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Here is your weekly NEWS-Line for Occupational Therapists & COTAs eNewsletter.  For the latest news, jobs, education and blogs, posted daily, bookmark www.news-line.com/PO_home or to take NEWS-Line everywhere with you, save www.news-line.com/PO_home to your phone. Also, enjoy the latest issue of NEWS-Line magazine, always free.

NEWS:

Exercising At Home Has A Positive Effect On Parkinson's Patients

Even though exercise is known to be healthy, many people find it difficult to maintain an exercise program for a longer time. This applies even more to people with a chronic illness such as Parkinson's disease, where physical and mental limitations are additional obstacles. The Park-in-Shape study, funded by ZonMW (Netherlands Organization for Health Research & Development), tested an innovative solution for this challenge. The participants were divided into two groups. Both groups had a motivational app at their disposal, which offered the participants rewards for exercising. The control group only performed stretching exercises, while the active intervention group was instructed to exercise for 30-45 minutes on a stationary bicycle at home, at least three times a week.

The active group's exercise bikes were also equipped with motivating games, making the program more entertaining and

Poor Motor Skills Predict Long-Term Language Impairments For Children With Autism, Study Finds

Fine motor skills – used for eating, writing and buttoning clothing – may be a strong predictor for identifying whether children with autism are at risk for long-term language disabilities, according to a Rutgers-led study.

The study, in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, highlights the association between fine motor skills and their later language development in young speech-delayed children with autism who, at approximately age three, are nonverbal or using primarily single words to communicate.

In an American sample of language-delayed children with autism, researchers found that nearly half had extremely delayed fine motor skills. Of this group, 77.5% who had extremely delayed motor skills continued to have language disabilities in later childhood or young adulthood. By contrast, 69.6% of children who demonstrated less impaired fine motor skills overcame their language

Multicomponent Home-Based Treatments Improve Mobility In Older Adults After Hip Fracture

Each year more than 260,000 older Americans are hospitalized for hip fractures, a debilitating injury that can severely and permanently impact mobility. Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) studied two types of home-based interventions and discovered that these treatments are effective in helping individuals regain their ability to walk, but not enough to do every day functions like crossing the street.

Jay Magaziner, PhD, MSHyg, Professor and Chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at UMSOM was the Principal Investigator for this research and Rebecca L Craik, PT, PhD, FAPTA, Dean of the College of Health Sciences at Arcadia University was Co-Principal Investigator. The research was a multidisciplinary partnership involving investigators from epidemiology, physical therapy, geriatrics, orthopedics, gerontology, health economics, biostati

Feeling Legs Again Improves Amputees' Health

While walking, people with intact legs feel when they move their knee or when their feet touch the ground. The nervous system constantly draws on sensory feedback of this sort to precisely control muscles. People using a leg prosthesis, however, do not know precisely where the prosthesis is located, how it is moving, or what type of terrain it is standing on. They often cannot trust their pros-thesis completely when walking, leading them to rely too often on their intact leg, which in turn re-duces their mobility and causes them to tire quickly. A simple walk on pebbles or sand, for example, can prove very exhausting for people using a prosthesis. Furthermore, people with amputations can experience phantom limb pain, a condition that existing medications often cannot treat. Savo Panic, who experiences this phenomenon, says he wakes up at night due to the phantom pain: "The toe that I don

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