Measures of gait center of pressure (COP) can be recorded using simple available technologies in clinical settings and thus can be used to characterize gait quality in older adults and its relationship to falls. The aim of this systematic review was to investigate the association between measures of gait COP and aging and falls. A comprehensive search of electronic databases including MEDLINE, Embase, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, CINAHL (EBSCO), Ageline (EBSCO) and Scopus was performed. The initial search yielded 2809 papers. After removing duplicates and applying study inclusion/exclusion criteria, 34 papers were included in the review. Gait COP has been examined during three tasks: normal walking, gait initiation, and obstacle negotiation. The majority of studies examined mean COP position and velocity as outcome measures. Overall, gait in older adults was characterized by more medial COP trajectory in normal walking and lower average anterior-posterior and medio-lateral COP displacements and velocity in both gait initiation and obstacle crossing. Moreover, findings suggest that Tai chi training can enhance older adults' balance control during gait initiation as demonstrated by greater COP backward, medial and forward shift in all three phases of gait initiation. These findings should be interpreted cautiously due to inadequacy of evidence as well as methodological limitations of the studies such as small sample size, limited numbers of ‘fallers’, lack of a control group, and lack of interpretation of COP outcomes with respect to fall risk. COP measures can be adopted to assess fall-related gait changes in older adults but more complex measures of COP that reveal the dynamic nature of COP behavior in step-to-step variations are needed to adequately characterize gait changes in older adults.

步态压力中心（COP）的测量值可以在临床环境中使用简单的可用技术记录下来，因此可以用来表征老年人的步态质量及其与跌倒的关系。该系统评价的目的是研究步态COP值与衰老和跌倒之间的关系。对包括MEDLINE，Embase，Cochrane对照试验中央注册，CINAHL（EBSCO），Ageline（EBSCO）和Scopus在内的电子数据库进行了全面搜索。最初的搜索产生2809篇论文。在删除重复项并应用研究纳入/排除标准后，本评价纳入了34篇论文。步态COP已在以下三个任务中进行了检查：正常行走，步态启动和障碍物协商。大多数研究检查了作为结果指标的平均COP位置和速度。总体而言，老年人的步态表现为正常行走时COP轨迹更内侧，步态起始和障碍物穿越时前后平均COP位移和速度较低。此外，研究结果表明，太极拳训练可以增强老年人在步态启动过程中的平衡控制，这在步态启动的所有三个阶段中都有较大的COP向后，向内和向前移位证明。由于证据不足以及研究方法的局限性，例如样本量小，“跌倒者”的数量有限，缺乏对照组以及对跌倒风险缺乏对COP结果的解释，应谨慎解释这些发现。 。