A little change as you walk may help treat knee osteoarthritis
A little adjustment in the angle of the foot during walking may reduce knee pain caused by osteoarthritis, Gait analysis and pain measures revealed
New York: A little adjustment in the angle of the foot during walking may reduce knee pain caused by osteoarthritis, Gait analysis and pain measures revealed.
This approach may also slow progression of the condition, an uncurable disease in which the cartilage cushion inside a joint breaks down, the analysis said.
Gait analysis is systematic study of human walking, encompassing observation, measurement, and interpretation of movement patterns.
The study was led by a team of researchers at NYU Langone Health, the University of Utah, and Stanford University.
Study Findings
The study explored whether changing the way patients position their feet when walking could lessen extra loading — stress on the joint during motion — and help treat the disease.
The scientists tested this intervention in 68 men and women with mild to moderate knee osteoarthritis and then used advanced MRI scans to track how well it worked.
The results suggest that those trained to angle their feet slightly inward or outward from their natural alignment experienced slower cartilage degeneration in the inner part of their knee compared with those who were encouraged to walk more frequently without changing their foot position, according to a report on the study published online August 12 in the journal The Lancet Rheumatology.
"Although our results will have to be confirmed in future studies, they raise possibility that the new, non-invasive treatment could help delay surgery," said study co-lead author Valentina Mazzoli, PhD.
The findings also revealed that those who adjusted their foot angle reduced their pain score by 2.5 points on a 10-point scale, an effect equivalent to that of over-the-counter pain medications. By contrast, those who did not change their gait reduced their pain scores by little more than a point.
"Altogether, our findings suggest that helping patients find their best foot angle to reduce stress on their knees may offer an easy and fairly inexpensive way to address early-stage osteoarthritis," added Mazzoli.
Past research has offered little evidence that changes in gait can effectively reduce knee pain caused by osteoarthritis. The new study is the first to show that tailoring each patient's foot angle to their unique walking pattern can alleviate the disease's symptoms in the long term and may slow cartilage breakdown, the authors said.
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