Participants
Fourteen ambulatory adults with CP (7 male and 7 fe- male; mean age of 28 years) were recruited to the tread- mill walking exercise experimental group. A control group of 7 adults with CP, who attended conventional physical therapy alone, were also recruited. This study
was approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB No. 4-2008-0624). Total 21 CP participants were randomly allocated to either the experimental or control group at a 2:1 ratio, using a central telephone randomization service [10]. Inclusion criteria were as follows: the ability to ambulate independently indoors without a gait aid and the ability to follow verbal directions for standardized testing. The following were used as exclusion criteria: orthopedic surgery such as musculotendinous lengthening and femoral derotation osteotomy, neurosurgery such as selective dorsal rhizotomy and intrathecal baclofen pump implantation, or botulinum toxin injection into gastrocnemius, medial hamstring and hip adductors in the past 12 months, and clinically evident unstable cardiac status, or any premorbid conditions. All participants in the experimental group performed a treadmill walking exercise for 30 minutes and conventional physical therapy. The treadmill walking exercise protocol for the current study consisted of 3–5 training sessions per week for 1–2 months (total 20 sessions). Participants in the control group received conventional physical therapy in the same sessions.