Effect of baseline motor impairment on therapy-mediated improvements
motor impairment, Dextrain
To investigate whether BBT change was affected by initial scores (e.g., through ceiling effect) we checked whether patients with high initial BBT scores showed less improvement with training. Patients with high BBT at T0 (> 40) had similar change as patients with lower initial BBT scores, and there was no association between initial BBT scores (T0) and BBT-change (T1-T0) (Additional file BBT-change was compared after splitting groups according to baseline median Fmax% score = 61.2%, i.e., Fmax% > 61.2% was considered a mild, and Fmax% < 61.2% a moderate motor impairment. BBT-change was compared using Mann–Whitney U test across subgroups. Within the Dextrain group (N = 21), the low Fmax% subgroup had median BBT-change (T1-T0) of 6 points, compared to only 2 points in the high subgroup, which was significantly different (Fig. 