Walking, running, and recreational sports for knee osteoarthritis: An overview of the evidence
Four pages on PainSci cite Voinier 2022: 1. Guide to Repetitive Strain Injuries 2. Bone on Bone 3. Bone-on-bone, Part 2: Should we ever say it? (Member Post) 4. Exercise is anti-inflammatory medicine for injuries (Member Post)
PainSci commentary on Voinier 2022: ?This page is one of thousands in the PainScience.com bibliography. It is not a general article: it is focused on a single scientific paper, and it may provide only just enough context for the summary to make sense. Links to other papers and more general information are provided wherever possible.
Voiner and White reviewed a lot of reviews of the relationship between exercise and arthritis — an “overview of narrative reviews, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses,” twenty of them. They also threw a dozen original trials into the mix. Their clear conclusion, based on “consistent evidence,” is that arthritis just has nothing to do with common kinds of physical activity and exercise, like walking and running and playing softball. Specifically, the “structural progression” is unrelated to physical activity in the general population.
original abstract †Abstracts here may not perfectly match originals, for a variety of technical and practical reasons. Some abstacts are truncated for my purposes here, if they are particularly long-winded and unhelpful. I occasionally add clarifying notes. And I make some minor corrections.
OBJECTIVE: We provided an overview of narrative reviews, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses that summarize primary evidence of how physical activity (PA) relates to structural progression of knee osteoarthritis (OA). This overview can serve as a resource for healthcare providers when recommending PA to patients with, or at risk, for knee OA.
METHODS: We searched the PubMED database for publications on “exercise” [MeSH Terms] and “knee osteoarthritis” [MeSH Terms]. We restricted our search to review articles, originally published in English, from 2005 to 2020. We then added several original studies to provide more detailed support of the findings of the review articles, based on the authors familiarity with the literature.
RESULTS: We summarized the findings of 20 reviews and an additional 12 original studies. We found consistent evidence that common forms of PA (walking, running, and certain recreational sports) are not related to structural progression of knee OA, and can be safely recommended to patients with, or at risk, for knee OA.
CONCLUSION: Healthcare providers can refer to this overview of the evidence, as well as current PA guidelines, when recommending PA to their patients with, or at risk for, knee OA. Future studies can support PA guidelines that target preserving the structural integrity of the knees.
This page is part of the PainScience BIBLIOGRAPHY, which contains plain language summaries of thousands of scientific papers & others sources. It’s like a highly specialized blog. A few highlights:
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